More about Robert Burns

If you are in the UK, here are two very interesting BBC programmes that aired on Burns Night 2022.

First, made in 1996, the poet Maya Angelou (whose name I have consistently mispronounced since for ever, it seems, and I am sorry about that) explores the poetry of Burns.   You'd need to be in the UK to watch it, Angelou on Burns, on the BBC iPlayer, sometime in the next 29 days.   Angelou draws comparisons between her upbringing in Arkansas and Burns' life in Ayrshire.   Heed the warning about upsetting scenes - because she talks about enslaved people in the southern United States, there are some.

There are musicians and singers at the event she attends - they are named at the end.   I found myself wondering if Angelou would still make the same programme if she could do so in 2022.   

And then, Inside the mind of Robert Burns, which visits Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire and Edinburgh, talks to Scottish based academics and poets and explores Burns relationship with women, his politics and his mental health.   On the iPlayer, titled Inside the mind of Robert Burns, for 29 days, first shown in 2020.   Again, notice the warning about the language - it does not hide the very explicit sexual nature of some of the language in his poetry or in one shocking letter (shocking because of what it might way about Burns' attitude to women, rather than the language itself, for me).   One of the academics is Dr Moira Hansen of the University of Glasgow, who researches Burns' mental health and is one of the authors of one of the articles in my original post.