Super-Infinite - John Donne & Letters to a Young Poet - Don Paterson

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive choosing a biography of poet, priest, scholar and soldier John Donne. And Letters to a Young Poet - Don Paterson, a programme inspired by the letters of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

* Super-infinite by Katherine Rundell (episode 4)

Katherine Rundell’s biography of the poet and "alchemist" of words John Donne. In episode 3, a runaway wedding and an inauspicious start to a relationship that fuelled some of the most desire-filled poetry in English.

Read by Blake Ritson.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton.
Producer: Allegra McIlroy
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2023.

* The Essay: Letters to a Young Poet

Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, award-winning Scottish poet and editor Don Paterson writes Letters to a Young Poet.

The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:

"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."

Producer: Emma Harding
First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in January 2014.

BBC Radio 4 Extra's Poetry Extra is produced by Sarah Wade.