The strange day WH Auden came to Ilkley
In the centernary year of one of England's great 20th century poets, a specially-convened session at the Ilkley Literature Festival remembers WH Auden's visit to the inaugural festival in 1973.
Unfortunately, that event is remembered for all the wrong reasons. Old and, though no-one knew it then, close to death, Auden's behaviour in Ilkley can best be described as eccentric.
Hear what happened in this OutLoud programme.
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This year's Ilkley Literature Festival brought together novelist and academic Katherine Bucknell, who edited a volume of Auden's poems; poet Kevin Crossley-Holland, who was commissioned to write a piece for Auden's visit; and local author Nick Toczek, who was in the audience in 1973.
Together, they recalled and unscrambled the events at Ilkley's first festival.
In tandem with the event, an exhibition of WH Auden material is on at the Manor House, Ilkley, until October 21.
Wystan Hugh Auden published about 400 poems, ranging in style from obscure 20th Century modernism to traditional ballads and limericks.
He also wrote more than 400 essays and reviews about literature, history, politics, music, religion, and many other subjects. He collaborated on plays with Christopher Isherwood and on opera libretti with Chester Kallman, worked with filmmakers on documentaries in the 1930s and with the New York Pro Musica early music group in the 1950s and 1960s.
Auden is perhaps best known in some modern circles for Funeral Blues which was read in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The Ilkley Literature Festival's website is at www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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