Wednesday evening on Radio 2 is the regular slot for Mark Radcliffe's The Folk Show. Often there is a live guest band on the show, and this week it was band called Mishaped Pearls. They released an album earlier this year entitled Shivelight.
You can listen again for a further 29 days to the programme, but you will need to have BBC account in order to sign in to the iPlayer to do so. If you do listen again, go to this link and then to 36:50. At his point Mishaped Pearls perform the track "Queen May", and then discuss the origins of the title of the album.
They have taken it from Gerard Manley Hopkins use of the word in the poem "That Nature is a Heraclitian Fire", to indicate the shaft of light that can be seen shining through the canopy of a forest. It is an appropriate choice of title, as many of the songs on the album do reflect on nature in a way with which Gerard Manley Hopkins might be familiar.
What is very striking in the programme, though, is Mark Radcliffe's familiarity with and enthusiasm for Gerard Manley Hopkins. He is able to quote the first lines of "The Windhover", adding the comment that it is "stunning stuff". Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at the connection between folk music and an interest in Hopkins' poetry ...
Do listen if you can ….
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