In this series, a contemporary poet advocates a poet of the past or present whom they have particularly admired. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express, the selectors offer intriguing insight into their own work.
Three women, each destined to play the role of a poet's wife: Catherine Blake, the wife of William Blake - a poet, painter and engraver who struggles for recognition in a society that dismisses him as a madman; Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, whose poetry costs him his life ...
The correspondence between the English poet Ted Hughes and the literary critic Keith Sagar began in 1969 and lasted until Hughes's death in 1998. During that time Hughes wrote 146 letters to Sagar, which show a unique dialogue between a writer and a critic.