The Burgage Hall became a BBC Radio 4 sound studio on Monday, as Ledbury Poetry Festival's poet in residence, Jo Shapcott, hosted the programme With Great Pleasure and introduced works that inspired her.

Actors Christian Rodska and Mark Meadows shouldered the lion's share of the readings, displaying great professionalism and passion.

It was a pleasure to observe how much Jo Shapcott enjoyed the works she had selected. Her delight in all of the literature presented was clearly shared by the audience.

Prose and poetry rubbed shoulders equally, and listeners were treated to a reverie through literary history, from William Langland's medieval Piers Ploughman to an extract from EB White's children's classic Charlotte's Web. Jo Shapcott stood up to read Emily Dickinson's erotic, I started early, which she described as "a very naughty poem".

We heard the words of the Gloucestershire-born Ivor Gurney and the wise opinion of Borges, the South American "magic realist", who wrote: "What is good belongs to no one . . .but to language and tradition".

Jo Shapcott concluded by quoting the German poet Holderlin, asking "what are poets for in a desolate time?" She concluded that even a world run by money, oil and weapons, "so much depends on getting the poem right".

The programme will go out on Thursday, August 28, at 11.30am.

Gary Bills-Geddes