The best way to appreciate poetry is to hear it read, and hearing poets read their own work usually provides more of an insight than seeing it on a page. That makes The Poetry Archive -- a new non-profit Web site from Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and recording producer Richard Carrington -- a very attractive proposition. The line-up is a bit thin, but it does include some historical recordings from Tennyson, Kipling, Yeats, Robet Browning and Siegfried Sassoon, as well as the ones you'd expect. (Plus at least one you probably wouldn't expect: computer magazine publisher Felix Dennis.) Several have been recorded specially, such as Dannie Abse and Seamus Heaney. Unfortunately all the recordings seem to be in RealPlayer format, which in my case I have not got, but many are also for sale on CD.
These are early days so it's not surprising there are some shocking omissions, such as Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, Robert Frost and Basil Bunting. (Bunting reading Briggflatts to Scarlatti was a masterpiece.) However, you can suggest recordings or name poets who are worth recording.
There's a BBC News report here. Sadly, The Guardian didn't report it in print but our Culture Vulture blog picked it up from the Today programme and I note there's a leader tomorrow.
