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Sunday 7 December 2014

BBC Forum - Unintended Consequences



Just to let you know the BBC FORUM  programme on Unintended Consequences will be broadcast on BBC World Service from this Saturday 6th December – Tuesday , depending on where in the world you are. Go tohttp://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio/help/faq for times and how to listen. 

Main UK Radio broadcast on DAB, cable, Freeview etc. is on Tuesday at 09:05am.

In the US Sirius XM satellite radio carries the full BBC WS schedule, 
http://www.siriusxm.com/bbc/weeklyschedule

You can also access the show or point others to it via ITunes.

The website will be active and populated by Saturday 6th Dec 2014, if not before. If the link doesn't work for whatever reason, please just put in Google "The Forum BBC World Service Unintended Consequences" and it will come up.

The programme will also be available online from Tuesday 9th December here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02d5qfp, and will stay permanently on our archive.

Podcast (available for four weeks after the radio broadcast):http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/forum or through iTunes.

There is a  community of listeners on our Facebook Page. They love having guests take part. Do become a fan and join in the conversation http://tinyurl.com/ykx3nzw You can follow on twitter @BBCTheForum
twitter-bird-blue-on-white @BBC

Friday 7 November 2014

Serial



Serial is the world's most popular podcast and doesn't need my endorsement, but the hype is worth it - it is The Wire of podcasts - and, now I have heard episode 7, confirms my opinion that if you at all interested in motive and character and narrative then it is essential listening.

Vulture will provide you with five more reasons to listen

Saturday 1 November 2014

Windows on the World


Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul, Turkey
Matteo Pericoli’s new book, Windows on the World, features his intricate pen-and-ink illustrations of fifty views from fifty writers’ windows, including those of Orhan Pamuk, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and the late Nadine Gordimer. In short essays alongside the drawings, these authors share what they see from their windows—around the world, from Lagos to Berlin—drawing a new map of our imaginations and dreams.
Now you can have your view illustrated by Pericoli, too.
Starting November 1, submit a photograph of the view through your window—including the window frame—along with three hundred words about what you see, tocontests@theparisreview.org. Submissions will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Penguin Press, and by Matteo Pericoli. The winner will receive Pericoli’s original sketch and have his or her essay published on the Paris Review Daily. Five finalists will receive signed copies of Windows on the World. By submitting a contest entry, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to the contest rules below.
Submissions will be accepted from November 1-15, 2014.

Saturday 22 February 2014

'Football at Slack'


FOOTBALL AT SLACK

By Ted Hughes

Between plunging valleys, on a bareback of hill
Men in bunting colours
Bounced, and their blown ball bounced.
The blown ball jumped, and the merry - coloured men
Spouted like water to head it.
The ball blew away downward -
The rubbery men bounced after it.
The ball blew jumped up and out and hung on the wind
Over a gulf of treetops.
Then they all shouted together, and the ball blew back.
Winds from fiery holes in heaven
Piled the hills darkening around them
To awe them. The glare light
Mixed its mad oils and threw glooms.
Then the rain lowered a steel press.
Hair plastered, they all just trod water
To puddle glitter. And their shouts bobbed up
Coming fine and thin, washed and happy
While the humped world sank foundering
And the valleys blued unthinkable
Under depth of Atlantic depression -
But the wingers leapt, they bicycled in air
And the goalie flew horizontal
And once again a golden holocaust
Lifted the cloud's edge, to watch them.

From: Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, edited by Paul Keegan. London: Faber

'One Ordinary Evening'



Lying entwined with you
on the long sofa

the hi-fi helping
Isolde to her climax

I was clipping
the coarse hairs

from your ears
and ruby nostrils

when you said, “Music
for cutting nose wires”

and we shook so
the nail scissors nicked

your gentle neck
blood your blood

I cleansed the place
with my tongue

and we clung tight
pelted with Teutonic cries

till the player
lifted its little prick

from the groove
all arias over

leaving us
in post-Wagnerian sadness

later that year
you were dead

by your own hand
blood your blood

I have never understood
I will never understand.


Virginia Hamilton Adair