This thesis is a creative and critical exploration of "radio poetry" -poems commissioned and produced for radio transmission, which utilise a verse-script, sound effects, music and other sonic materials as part of their poetic make-up. It argues that radio poetry has been overlooked in both literary criticism and radio studies, because of the ephemerality and ubiquity of its medium, and on account of the absence of a fully developed critical framework for its analysis. The thesis is intended to redress such a lack, and to outline the potential of radio poetry as a mode of sono-poetic expression different from other forms of radio output, including radio drama. The creative component is a thirty-seven minute radio poem entitled Captain Swing. This concerns the 1830 "Swing Riots," an agricultural uprising in southern England. The poem employs a multitude of voices and minutely detailed sound design to create a heightened soundscape of Nineteenth Century England in turmoil. The main critical component provides a definition of the radio poem, before detailing a history of this idiosyncratic literary mode at the BBC, a pioneering organisation in the production of English-language radio poetry. It also develops a heuristic method for the analysis of radio poems, using examples from a wide range of broadcasts by contemporary poets. The final part of the thesis is a self-reflective essay, which examines Captain Swing through the prism of the radio poem tradition.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:675850 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Maier, Benjamin |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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