3 – Beckett & Poetry

In this episode of 'Beckett &' Conor Carville talks to the acclaimed poet Peter Robinson about Beckett’s verse. Their conversation ranges over Beckett’s whole career, and his work in both English and French, from the early poems in 'Echo’s Bones' to the 'Mirlitonnades' of the 1970s. Topics include the importance of place in Beckett’s poetry, the changes apparent in his style and use of form, the influence of Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Eliot and Joyce (again), the idea of the sequence, Beckett’s notion of ‘vaguening’, nothingness (for a change), a fight between Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, and the mystery of the Futurist bicycle. You can access a PDF of the poems discussed here: https://research.reading.ac.uk/beckett/wp-content/uploads/sites/109/2021/07/Beckett-Poems.pdf Bibliography Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘Zone’ in Beckett (2014) Samuel Beckett, Collected Poems (2014) Samuel Beckett, Selected Poems 1930-1988 (2009) Conor Carville, ‘Smiling Tigers: Trauma, Sexuality and Creaturely Life in Echo’s Bones’ Access here: https://bit.ly/3ySTFLG Brian Coffey, Selected Poems (1971) Denis Devlin, Collected Poems (1964) T. S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’ in Selected Poems, 1909 -1962 (2015) Lee Harwood and Anthony Lopez, Wish You Were Here (1979) James Joyce, Dubliners (2000) Thomas MacGreevy, Collected Poems (1971) Derek Mahon, ‘Burbles’ in Collected Poems (1999) Peter Robinson, Bonjour Mr Inshaw (2020) Peter Robinson, Collected Poems (2017)

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