About poetry on the telly

In one of the remoter corners of the tributes to the late Michael Parkinson, I discover that WH Auden was an early guest on his talk show. (John Gielgud was on the same programme, and Cleo Laine sang a version of Auden’s own ‘O Tell Me The Truth About Love’.)

I can’t find a recording of this particular show, but there is a transcript. And if you wonder why we rarely see poets on primetime TV these days, it turns out that Wystan and Parky were interrogating that same issue, using a mass medium to ponder the fact of poetry’s minority status. The poet, to be honest, doesn’t seem too worried about the situation; he certainly offers no platitudes about accessibility or inclusivity:

MP: But there’s still a kind of elitist feeling about poetry in particular, I mean, isn’t there? 

WHA: No, I think obviously it appeals to a minority. I know certainly when I have to read there are a lot of students there, that’s all I can say. And they seem to enjoy it. 

MP: But the key word there was ‘minority’. Why should it be a minority? 

WHA: Well, because it’s a rather difficult art. You’ve got to have, both to write it and to read it, you’ve got to have this passionate love of language. 

MP: Yes. 

WHA: And that is probably... a minority who have this. 

Also from the dead poets’ society: participants in next month’s Dublin marathon will receive a medal that attributes the following to WB Yeats: “There are no strangers here: only friends you haven’t met yet.” Not only is there no evidence that Yeats wrote or said it, it seems rather unlikely that the grumpy old fascist sympathiser would even think along those lines. I wonder what he’d have had to say to Parky.