Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast this week. I want to look at some poetry

by an American poet called Robert Hayden. Robert Hayden died in 1980 and he's got a fabulous

clarity of style about him that I hope you will enjoy. The first poem I want to look

at of two is a poem called Those Winter Sondays. It's probably the most famous Robert Hayden

poem anthologised a lot and it was written in the early 60s. It's a kind of a sonnet in

that it has 14 lines which is that formula for a sonnet but sonnets in their tightest definition

of got things like iambic pentameter etc which I won't bore you with. So I'm going to

read the first I don't know the first half of it and it would just just get straight in

because I know I'd go on and who cares we're here for the poetry let's face that. Those

Winter Sondays by Robert Hayden. Sondays too my father got up early and put his clothes

on in the blue black cold then with cracked hands that ached from labour in the weekday

weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake near the cold splintering

breaking. Right. First line. Sondays too my father got up early. So Sondays too we know

that it's Sunday and we know that his father it seems gets up early for work we guess but

even on Sundays he gets up early. We got something about the father there people who get up early

maybe a bit stern maybe a bit formal maybe not loose laid back and lazy. Sondays too my father

got up early and put his clothes on in the blue black cold remember this is those winter

Sondays the blue black cold I think means that time in a winter morning that that thing that's

just between night and daylight when it's kind of blue black and also obviously it's called

the blue black cold early mornings reminds me of when I used to work in a factory and I used to get

up at that time of day in the winter when it hadn't become daylight yet and would step out into

the street with my little bundle of sandwiches wrapped in wax proof paper and there'd be lots of

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