Poetry Please: Goblin Market

**** This programme has been suggested by listeners Sue Evans and Tim Varley as part of BBC Radio 4 Extra’s All Request Weekend. *******

***And Daljit reads from his Poetry Extra Book of the Month: To an Unknown Receiver by poet and editor Erica Hesketh. A collection of sonnets considering humanity's creativity and capacity for hope.

In 'Poetry Please' Roger McGough features the poems of Christina Rossetti. Shirley Henderson gives a beguiling rendition of what is arguably Rossetti's most famous poem 'Goblin Market', published in 1862. It's a heady fairy tale about temptation involving two sisters, Laura and Lizzie.

The poem has a sexual undertone and a menacing quality that lurks among the persistent pleas of the fruit selling Goblin men to 'come buy, come buy.' Visits to your greengrocer may never be the same again.

There is also a reading of another of Rossetti's much requested and moving poems 'Remember,' as well as a lesser known poem of pilgrimage, 'Up-hill'.

Producer: Sarah Langan

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

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