Under a Cloud

Available for over a year

The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage writes about clouds a lot. And coming from Marsden in West Yorkshire he grew up in them too. But he wants to bring clouds out of the background of his work and into the foreground - to consider why the floating grey blobs that ruin picnics hold such a fascination for artists. He's always deployed them in his work as metaphors, but he's learning from great artists that they can be inspriational as entities in their own right. They hold a particular grip on poets, and most of us know what Wordsworth wandered lonely as in his generational poetic banger "Daffodils". Simon visits the poet's home to browse Wordsworth's notebooks and heads to The National Gallery to explore the meticulous approach of John Constable in The Haywain, which he developed in collaboration with the father of cloud classification, Luke Howard. And Simon considers how Joni Mitchell used them in her beautiful song "Both Sides Now". Throughout the programme, we follow Simon on a nerve-wracking challenge, as he brings a boyhood ambition full circle. He's in serious training. He's going to present the weather, and as his slot for a recording of his bulletin just moments before the programme goes live nears, the tension builds... Presented by Simon Armitage Produced by Kevin Core