Last week BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme entitled ‘Dorset Rewritten’ in which a number of local people, includ-ing myself, participated.
The programme was advertised as being about the Dorset dialect poet, William Barnes, and I suspect that some thousands of local people will have listened to it hoping to hear more of Barnes’s poetry.
Imagine my concern then, that apart from two verses of the obligatory ‘Linden Lea’, there was hardly any poetry by Barnes broadcast, just a few lines and there.
Yet they found time for a poem by Hardy, and two whole po-ems, for some reason, by a woman from the Black Country.
There was also an appalling bit of verse, in fake rustic speech, made up by the presenter.
I cannot for the life of me explain this, and so I must enquire whether the compiler had actually read a few poems by Barnes.
It seems to me that when one considers the great resources of the BBC, the subject was not properly addressed.
Certainly it would have come as a great disappointment to many Dorset people.
Why were there no Barnes poems included in full?
There are so many fine ones to choose from and some are quite short so that they would have fitted the format.
Why was the irrelevant Black Country poet given so much time? Was she somebody’s friend? I am baffled and vexed by this. The compiler has a few questions to answer.
Dr Alan Chedzoy, Biographer of Barnes and past chairman, The William Barnes Society
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