Poet criticises BBC soaps and aggressive interviewers

by Paul Conneally | July 16, 2008 at 05:06 am

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Wendy Cope is the poet that many feel could be should be the UK's first woman poet laureate - that's if she'd accept it of course. She knows a bit about radio as she is one of the few poets heard on the radio on a regular basis. Here we find out about her new commission - write about the BBC - and she has done. Not biting hard the hand that feeds it but certainly having a nibble.

Radio 4 has commissioned poet Wendy Cope to write a series of verses about the BBC to examine how public attitudes to its services have changed since a similar volume was published 80 years ago.
Cope's verses, called The ABC of the BBC, will be aired on Radio 4 next month, 80 years after Eleanor Farjeon, the composer of the hymn Morning Has Broken, wrote a collection of the same name.

Her work focuses on adultery in BBC soaps, unkind comedians, and aggressive and self-righteous interviewers.

The first poem in Cope's collection, called A is for Archers and Adultery, focuses on the "adulterous behaviour" in the long running Radio 4 soap opera.

Another echoes familiar public grumbling about changes to the Radio 4 schedules and celebrates the "angry middle classes" who "rise up and say 'No more!'".