Episode description
Ian McMillan explores what happens when writers have to shift their thoughts and feelings into a second language. Novelist Patrick McGuinness argues that he can 'feel more than he can say in French, and say more than he can feel in English', Nick Makoha brings us a new poetry commission inspired by leaving Uganda (and three languages behind) when he was only four. We also hear about the 'Polish Sappho' - the groundbreaking poet Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska who moved to Blackpool during the Second World War, and Heather Dohollau (who was born in Wales , but became an acclaimed poet in French). And our returning guest, the poet Kate Fox skewers that the familiar trope of the book blurb - the writer who 'divides their time' by choice - between two equally glamorous locations.