Versifications: The Sonnet

Free verse poet Andrew McMillan meets a diverse group of contemporary British poets who are re-framing traditional techniques to write about the modern world, exploring why form is fashionable again. In this programme, poet and academic Aviva Dautch goes back in time to unpick the history of the classic but flexible sonnet, with poems read by Juliet Stevenson. She traces the sonnet's European origins and the poetic revolution that happened once it reached the UK and became a mainstay of English poetry in a modern multicultural Britain