A recording of Sean O'Brien, Don Paterson and Fiona Sampson discussing Peter Porter, chaired by Anthony Thwaite.

The T.S. Eliot Memorial Meeting

Peter Porter, who died in April, has been described as ‘a cultural epoch all to himself’. Having arrived in London from Australia in 1951, he established himself as one of the most distinguised poets in Britain, his work ranging from satirical verse about 1960s London to ‘Exequy’, his great elegy for his first wife. ‘If there is a message in my poetry,’ Porter wrote, ‘it is that human dilemmas are constant, evil exists alongside some manifestation of good, and that one must write out of all aspects of life as one encounters it.’ Four fellow poets – Anthony Thwaite, who knew Porter for over half a century, Fiona Sampson, editor of Poetry Review, and Don Paterson and Sean O’Brien, who edited Porter’s recently published Selected Poems – celebrate his work.

 Recorded on Monday 13 December 2010