Free Thinking - T S Eliot prize
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2014
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sinead Morrissey is the winner of this year's T S Eliot Prize for her anthology Parallax. She performs her poems and talks to Anne McElvoy about her role as Belfast's first Poet Laureate. As a new wall is built between Bulgaria and Turkey to deter immigrants Anne explores the way governments use walls to control people's movements and the political and architectural impact of walls as both barriers and gateways. And as Radio 3's Drama on 3 is given over to a new adaptation of The Oresteia, Aeschylus' classic trilogy about murder, revenge and justice, playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz - whose new version of The Furies is the final episode, and classicist Edith Hall discuss the tragedies and their modern relevance.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three. |
| 0:40.5 | Hello on free thinking tonight. I'll be talking to the winner of the new T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize about photography, poetry and perspective. |
| 0:49.1 | And do you remember where you were when this concrete construction crumbled? |
| 0:53.8 | And one engineer has literally started hammering into the Berlin Wall, making a first |
| 0:59.0 | incision. There we go now, any minute, any second now, the Berlin Wall will be broken into. |
| 1:06.9 | The fall of the wall in 1989 there, and we'll be discussing the political and architectural |
| 1:11.8 | impact of walls, past and present, as both barriers and gateways later on. Now, Radio 3 is |
| 1:18.7 | currently broadcasting an adaptation of Eskolas's trilogy of murder, revenge and justice. The |
| 1:24.9 | Oristaya premiered at the Dionysia Festival in Athens in 458 BC, and |
| 1:31.0 | it's retained its grip on our imaginations, with its evocations of bloodlust, furies and warring |
| 1:37.1 | ideas of just desserts. At the outset, Agamemnon returns home, glorious after victory in Troy, |
| 1:44.0 | but having sacrificed his daughter, |
| 1:46.2 | Iphigenia to the gods. His wife, Clytemnestra, promptly kills him as a human sacrifice to |
| 1:52.0 | avenge the murder and prolongs the feuds of blood vengeance. In the manner of a very upmarket |
| 1:57.5 | Greek soap opera, things don't end there. Cloutemnestra's son, Orestes, in turn, kills his mother and draws the retribution of the |
| 2:05.4 | Furies. |
| 2:06.6 | Plitemnestra holds herself bereft. |
| 2:10.2 | She cannot cry. |
| 2:12.5 | She stares at the Furies and shakes. |
... |
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