I'm bang in the middle of another series of Word of Mouth, produced this series by Peter Everett. We're launching an 'aphorisms competition' in this run, so if you feel like making up a pithy, wise, cryptic saying that will help people find their way through life, then go in for it. You know the sort of thing: 'Even the longest journey has to begin with one step'. Of course, spoof ones are great too. 'Every paperbag is either empty or full'. Try it, and send them in.
I'm also in the middle of doing a programme for Radio 4 that is trying to figure out why the four most well-known writers of fantasy books for children, all came from and lived (or in one case is still living) in Oxford. That's Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S.Lewis and Philip Pullman. So I'm off to Oxford to try and find out if it's something to do with the air, the food, the rain or something particular about the way they taught religion and literature, or whether it's because it's such a peculiar place, it inspired fiction that was fantastical rather than realist.
One little goodbye for me is to a show that I've done for over fifteen years, 'Poems by Post' on the World Service. It started out in 1989 as a World Service equivalent of 'Poetry Please' and in the time that I presented it, we broadcast poems from all over the world, the Caribbean, India, Australia, Canada, many African countries, the Middle East, Russian and so on. I interviewed such people as Wole Soyinka and we broadcast poetry read by poets themselves - Wendy Cope, Roger McGough and so on. Apart from anything else, it was a fantastic education for me. I got to know of poets that I would perhaps have never come across, such as classic Chinese poets like Tu Fu and Li Po. I remember on one occasion, walking down Kingsway towards Bush House, the sun was out and the traffic was roaring down my ear. I knew that in an hour or so I would be introducing some poems from all over the world, chosen by people who live all over the world for a broadcast that would be heard all over the world and I became suddenly utterly overcome by it all. I thought I couldn't possibly want to be doing anything better than this in the line of work. When I looked back to me as a teenager, then at college, then scrabbling around doing bits and bobs after college, this would have been beyond anything I could have imagined myself doing.
Anyway, the show got incorporated into the strand on the World Service that is the book review show, called 'The Word'. (I also used to present its predecessor, 'Meridian Books'. 'The Word' is presented by someone who I think is one of the very best presenters of arts programmes on radio or TV, Harriet Gilbert and when 'The Word' does poetry request programmes, which it will, Harriet will present them. The bosses feel that it's confusing to the listeners, to switch out of its usual format, for poetry request, and then come back again.
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