Laura Ashe
If the poets of the past sat in their garrets dipping their quills in ink and waiting for inspiration to strike, our current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has a more mundane and domestic arrangement. From his wooden shed in the garden, surrounded on all sides by the Pennine Hills and the Pennine weather, he scratches away at his reworking of the comic medieval poem The Owl and the Nightingale. Any distraction is welcome, even encouraged, to talk about poetry, music, art, sheds, sherry, owls, nightingales and to throw light on some of the poem's internal themes. Professor Laura Ashe is a historian of English medieval literature, history and culture. She lectures in English at Oxford University. At this point in his translation of the poem The Owl and the Nightingale, Simon Armitage invites Laura to help him with some of the final details. From the toilet habits of the nightingale to the Game of Thrones atmosphere of the period, from the hippy ideals of the nightingale to the tut-tutting of the buttoned up owl. Producer: Sue Roberts