In Our Time – Thomas Hardy’s Poetry

BBC Radio 4 | Aired: November 13, 2025
Host: Melvyn Bragg
Guests: Mark Ford (UCL), Jane Thomas (Hull/Leeds), Tim Armstrong (Royal Holloway)

Overview:

This episode is a rich exploration of Thomas Hardy’s poetic legacy, foregrounding his transition from celebrated novelist to prolific, innovative poet. Melvyn Bragg brings together three Hardy scholars—Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, and Tim Armstrong—to discuss Hardy’s distinctly modern vision, his experiments with elegy, his personal traumas (especially the loss of his first wife, Emma), and his enduring influence on later poets. The discussion intermingles biography, close readings of major poems, and reflections on how Hardy reshaped English poetry.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hardy’s Early Life and Poetic Beginnings

• Family & Early Influences (03:18–05:04)
  • Hardy was born near Dorchester in 1840, his father a church violinist, instilling a musicality evident in his poetry.
  • Mother Jemima, despite poverty, emphasized education and literary ambition.
  • Became infatuated with Latin and Greek, learning them largely as an autodidact from age 16.
• First Forays into Poetry (05:04–07:48)
  • Early obsession and nightly writing in London, with initial works rejected by editors.
  • Example: She to Him sonnets, drawing on Shakespeare and Donne, displaying emotional intensity and intellectual complexity.

“His concern with reading and writing poetry was the thing that dominate his life in London.” —Mark Ford (05:04)

2. Shift to Novels and Back to Poetry

• Practicality and Popularity (07:57–09:15)
  • Wrote novels for financial reasons, achieving annual output and major successes (Tess, Jude).
• Poetry Regained (11:17–13:04)
  • Public backlash against Jude the Obscure and a personal desire for creative freedom led Hardy back to poetry permanently.
  • Over final 38 years, produced more than 900 poems, establishing an extraordinary late-life poetic career.
  • Sought to express “most of the cardinal situations that occur in social and public life... and a round of emotional experiences of some completeness.” —Mark Ford (12:00)

3. Hardy’s Relationships: Emma and Beyond

• Emma’s Role (09:15–10:54)
  • Emma, Hardy’s first wife, encouraged his writing and was the muse for many heroines.
  • Their early romance is central to later poetry.

“If Emma hadn’t encouraged him at that point, we would have lost one of the greatest writers in the English language.” —Jane Thomas (10:54)

• Estrangement and Creative Grief (16:22–20:20)
  • Marriage deteriorated, with Hardy’s infatuations and Emma’s increasing isolation.
  • Her sudden death in 1912 catalyzed the Poems 1912–13, a profound sequence showing guilt, loss, and imaginative resurrection.

4. Poetic Form and Innovation

• Elegy and Sequence (20:39–22:32)
  • Hardy reinvents elegy through multi-staged, self-reflexive journeys through grief (After a Journey, Your Last Drive).
  • Themes of memory, guilt, and imaginative reunion dominate.
• Persona and Voice (31:41–33:06)
  • Often uses persona/projection: “Hardy himself insisted that his poems were personas, projections.” —Mark Ford (32:02)
  • Creates immediacy, yet maintains ambiguity and abstraction.
• Experimentation (39:01–39:57)
  • Lexical play, dialect, syntactic jaggedness, surreal imagery, topical range (abortion, religion, love, loss).

5. Signature Poems and Themes

a. Romantic Disenchantment

• Neutral Tones (13:41–15:45)
  • Early poem dissecting a love’s end with stark skepticism, foreshadowing Hardy’s association of romance with loss and death.

“All he learns from this experience of breaking up is that love rings with wrong; things are always about to go wrong.” —Mark Ford (15:14)

b. Emma Elegies

• After a Journey, The Voice (20:20–31:41)
  • Complex blend of memory and longing; Emma’s spirit is encoded in the landscape, especially Cornwall (24:53–26:31).

“She unlocked something in him which enabled him to write a lot better.” —Melvyn Bragg (26:26)

• Extract from The Voice read by Jane Thomas (28:51–30:14)
  • Hardy’s measure and emotional cadence symbolize grief’s evolution:

  "Thus I, faltering forward, / Leaves around me falling, / Wind oozing thin through the thorn from Norwood, / And the woman calling." (30:09)

c. Nature and Loss

• Darkling Thrush (42:36–44:18)
  • New Year’s poem blending hope and skepticism amid bleakness, representing the undecidability of Hardy’s vision.

“Is this a great outpouring of hope for the new century, or is it some blessed hope whereof the narrator simply couldn't see it?” —Jane Thomas (43:24)

• Birds & Cycles of Nature
  • Later nature poems: cyclical, Darwinian, rural realism rather than romantic idealization—nature as inscrutable, not didactic.

6. Religion, Philosophy, and Modernity

• Loss of Faith and Gothic Imagery (33:10–35:39)
  • Central theme: death of God and the “hole left by the loss of belief.”
  • Hardy read Darwin, Kant, Bergson; incorporated modern uncertainty, seeking solace in “loving kindness.”
  • Gothic architecture: poetic structure as a vast cathedral with “niches” for every style and emotion.

7. War Poetry and the Marginalized

• Drummer Hodge & The Dynasts (35:39–38:56)
  • Focus on victims, forgotten individuals. War is presented as futile tragedy, not heroism.
• Comparison with Rupert Brooke
  • Hardy: “anti-nationalism, anti-patriotism, anti-empire,” honoring the ordinary—“the people left behind, the people below history” (35:51–36:41).

8. Poetic Ambition and Influence

• Aiming for Immortality (40:46–42:36)
  • Viewed poetry as a higher art than novels, inspired by Palgrave’s Golden Treasury.
  • Major influence on subsequent poets: “Hardy carried Auden through...to Eliot of the modernism.” —Jane Thomas (42:00)
  • Admired by de la Mare, Sassoon, Frost, Pound, Larkin, Heaney.

9. Hardy’s Humor and Public Voice

• Comic Verse
  • The Ruined Maid as an example of Hardy’s capacity for irony and humor, drawing on music hall traditions (51:52–53:07).
  • Self-deprecation and risk in tone—balancing tragic with comic.
• ‘Poetry is emotion put into measure... measure can be acquired by art.’ —Jane Thomas quoting Hardy (30:17)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Hardy’s poetic ambition:

  “...the central vision of his own destiny that he will be a great poet.” —Mark Ford (42:00)

• On Emma’s influence:

  “She opened the door. Indeed.” —Jane Thomas (09:21)

• On form and emotion:

  “Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.” —Jane Thomas quoting Hardy (30:17)

• On loss and creation:

  “He was only able to kind of love women after they had died.” —Mark Ford (15:54)

• On poetic philosophy:

  “What are my books but one plea against man’s inhumanity to man, woman, and the lower animals?” —Jane Thomas on Hardy (35:51)

Sample Poems Read or Discussed (with context)

• She to Him (05:49–07:30): Early sonnet cycle, emotionally charged.
• After a Journey, The Voice (20:39–31:41): Cornerstones of Hardy’s poetic confrontation with grief.
• Shadow on the Stone (45:36–47:41): Orphic meditation on memory and presence.
• The Self Unseeing (47:41–48:45): Childhood recollection underscoring estrangement from one’s own past.
• In Time of the Breaking of Nations (48:45–50:10): Reflection on the futility of war, continuity of ordinary life.
• The Ruined Maid (51:52–53:07): Satirical, dramatic monologue.

Importance of Landscape (24:53–28:46)

• Cornwall as mythical: Emma embodies the genius loci (spirit of place), and Hardy’s sense of freedom and romance is mapped onto the unpredictable Cornish coast.
• Landscape fuses memory and desire, shaping the style and feeling of his elegies.

Hardy’s Influence and Legacy

• Recognized by poets across the 20th century for his realism and innovation.
• Helped bridge Victorian and modernist sensibilities—praised by Auden, Pound, Frost, Larkin, and Heaney.

Final Thoughts

This episode delivers a fascinating, nuanced portrait of Hardy as a poet whose works bear a “spinal cord of thought” (07:06)—intellectually rigorous but emotionally direct, negotiating personal grief, philosophical uncertainty, and the realities of rural life. The conversation underscores Hardy’s dual legacy: as a chronicler of loss, but also as a courageous experimenter whose poetry speaks across generations.

For further exploration:

• Hardy’s Poems 1912–13, Neutral Tones, Darkling Thrush, Drummer Hodge, The Ruined Maid
• Studies of poetic form, innovation, elegy, and the journey from the Victorian to the modern

Summary by an expert podcast summarizer. For the full experience, tune into BBC Radio 4’s “In Our Time: Thomas Hardy’s Poetry” (13 Nov 2025).