George Barker

T. S. Eliot described George Barker as a genius, and W B Yeats compared his rhythmic invention to that of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Drawing primarily on previously unpublished BBC broadcasts spanning the years 1952 to 1982, this CD presents Barker performing some of his best-known poems. The set begins with "The True Confession" - the broadcast of which was controversial enough to provoke comment in the House of Lords - and includes several moving memorials to dead friends and fellow poets, his early mentor Eliot among them. The set climaxes with an extract from a live recording made by the British Library in 1983. Clearly in a rumbustious mood, Barker starts and abandons a series of his early poems before delivering an electrifying reading of his elegy "At the Wake of Dylan Thomas".