Clive James on poetry and growing up in Australia

Clive James on poetry and growing up in Australia

07 Apr 2011

Speakers: Clive James

Clive James describes how, growing up in Australia, he fell into poetry for its rhythm and a love for 'the way the words moved'. It was his mother's love for Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat that initially drew him to poetry as a literary genre, despite being "impermeable," as a young man, "against all higher feelings of mankind". His love for poetry grew upon hearing the words of Ernest Dowson's They Are Not Long – as the words drifted up to him in a Sydney theatre, he describes how he was "thrilled, captivated" and how he "learnt it instantly". James continues with readings from John Lyly, Louis MacNeice's' Birmingham, the driving rhythm of which helped to form him, and his own work including When We Were Kids and Whitman And The Moth.