Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. I want to talk about a William Wordsworth poem.

Now I know, I know I've done Wordsworth on the podcast before. I'll be straight with you.

I recently did a three-part TV documentary about Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Colrich.

And I'm so Wordsworth op from doing that. So shot through with Wordsworth in enthusiasm

that I've got to lance that boil. And so I'm asking you to help me to get some of this Wordsworth out

of my system. I'm going to talk about a poem that I didn't talk about on that show. So feel free

to go away and watch all three episodes and we won't be doubling up. The poem I want to talk about

is called Resolution and Independence. Yeah, it's not as strict as it sounds. It's one of Wordsworth's

encounter poems. He used to meet people as he walked the hundreds and thousands of miles that he

walked in order to compose and to be inspired to write poetry. And he met the Leech Gatherer.

He actually literally met the Leech Gatherer, which was the man who features in this poem

more of him later. He met him in 1800. I have actually seen the diary entry in his sister's diary,

which says, oh yeah, we met this Leech Gatherer guy. And then he wrote the poem in 1802. Wordsworth's

style was to let things marinate and think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it.

Okay. So this features what you might call a one of Wordsworth's spots of time. That was his word

for it, his phrase for it. For him a spot of time is something that happens that seems relatively

non-significant. And then he goes away and choose it over and sort of places it in context and

examines all the implications and significances of it. And then he turns it into a poem. Okay.

So resolution and independence. I don't know about you. Man, am I looking forward to this. Here goes

there was a roaring, this is the beginning of the poem. I'm not going to read the whole poem

since long, but I'm going to read what I would call the best bits. There was a roaring in the

wind all night. The rain came heavily and fell in floods. But now the sun is rising calm and bright.

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