Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. This week, I am going to do Jeffrey

Hill in 1932 to 2016. I am particularly going to do his collection Mercy and Hymns, which

was published in 1971. It's partly a celebration of the West Midlands and 1971 was also the year

that Slade went number one for the first time with Kazai Love you. I'm from the West Midlands so

I'm happy to celebrate all related events. What drew me into Jeffrey Hill's mercy and Hymns was

that I am slightly obsessed with Anglo-Saxon history and mercy, you may know, was one of the larger

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms before, quite a time before England became a united country. In fact, on my last

stand-up to her, I tried to combine the gigs with places of Anglo-Saxon interest and also I had a

support act to had a degree in that area of history, which was handy. We went to Lindus Farm and

Whitby Abbey where the famous Synod of Whitby took place. I touched the tomb of the venerable

bead in Durham Cathedral. I went to the Yorvik Centre in York and saw an actual Viking turd. So it

was brilliant. Yes, so the word mercy and drew me in on this book. I'd like to start off with

something from the acknowledgments section. I don't often go to acknowledgments but I think this

is helpful. This is Jeffrey Hill giving some sort of explanation of how the book works. The

historical king offer, Reindover Mercia, that's offer OWFA. We'll talk much more of him as this

podcast progresses. The historical king offer Reindover Mercia and the greater part of England,

south of the Humber, in the years ID 757 to 796. During early medieval times it was already becoming

a creature of legend. The offer who figures in this sequence might perhaps most usefully be regarded

as the, wait for it, presiding genius of the West Midlands. His dominion and during from the

middle of the 8th century until the middle of the 20th and possibly beyond. That is obviously not

factual. It's sort of spiritual as Jeffrey Hill is easy. The indication of such a time span where

I trust explain and to some extent justify a number of anachronisms. So what happens in this book

...