New Generation Thinkers: Walking with the ghosts of the Durham coalfield
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2022
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comrade or "marra" in North East dialect, and the "dharma" or the way - were put together in a portmanteau word by poet Bill Martin (1925-2010). Poet and New Generation Thinker Jake Morris-Campbell reflects on this idea of Marradharma and what it offers to future generations growing up in the post Brexit and post industrial landscape of the North East. In his essay, Jake remembers the pilgrimage he made in 2016 carrying Bill Martin's ashes in a ram's horn from Sunderland (Martin was born in a nearby pit village) to Durham Cathedral.
Jake Morris-Campbell teaches at Newcastle University and was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021 on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find him discussing ideas about darkness in a Free Thinking discussion recorded at Sage Gateshead as part of Radio 3's After Dark festival, and looking at mining, coal and DH Lawrence https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xmjy
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.7 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.8 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:34.7 | Hello, I'm Jake Morris Campbell, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers. In this episode of |
| 0:41.5 | the Arts and Ideas podcast, which is called Walking with the Ghosts of the Durham Coalfield, |
| 0:47.5 | I'll be talking about the Northumbrian poet Bill Martin. BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:55.9 | Choosing way and how to scatter someone's ashes can be fraught with difficulties. |
| 1:01.3 | After he died in 2010, aged 85, the remains of the poet Bill Martin waited in his son's |
| 1:09.3 | wardrobe another six years until I was asked to carry them |
| 1:13.4 | in a ram's horn from Sundland to Durham Cathedral. Bill was a poet steeped in the great |
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