Music and Words

Adelle Stripe's Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure charts the gripping chaos and self-sabotage of a classic " drug band with a rock problem". She shares something in common with all our guests this week, who all stand at the crossroads of words and music. Her book describes a band who while plumbing the depths of personal behaviour and let's be honest - personal hygiene - maintain a strangely pure artistic vision. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon has also been trying to bottle the lightning of musical creativity on the page. He's edited and annotated a comprehensive collection of Sir Paul McCartney's lyrics. Paul explains how to look anew at songs we know so well and considers a talent that the best songwriters and poets often share: mimicry. Malika Booker reads a specially commissioned poem in our Something Old, Something New section, taking as her inspiration a line from The Verb Manifesto. From the archive, we hear Tony Harrison's Them and Uz. Anthony Joseph has been on a quest to learn more about a father he describes as largely absent. The result is "Sonnets for Albert", which explores the sonnet form yet infuses it with calypso and the natural delivery of his father's voice. Anthony performs his poem "Rings" for us. And Edmund Finnis tells us about Out of the Dawn's Mind, currently touring with the Soprano Ruby Hughes. He describes the challenge, not of capturing music on the page, but of travelling in the other direction, and bringing five poems of Alice Oswald from the page to musical life. Presented by Ian McMillan Produced by Kevin Core