Modern-ish Poets: Thomas Hardy

Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

Mark and Seamus discuss the life and work of Thomas Hardy, with its blend of bitterness of tenderness, its intense dramatisations of loss and grief, and its inversion of traditional tropes of love poetry to anticipate the attitudes of later 20th century writers.

This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: lrb.me/closereadings

This episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in August 2017, and is now available in full exclusively for Close Readings subscribers.

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences