Hannah Sullivan
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Earlier this year, when Hannah Sullivan won the biggest prize in the poetry world, the TS Eliot Prize, the chair of the judges announced: \\u201cA star is born. Where has she come from?\\u201d Such a prestigious prize is a rare honour, as the book, Three Poems, was Hannah Sullivan\\u2019s first published collection. Up until then, she\\u2019d established a successful academic career, studying at Cambridge, teaching at Harvard and for the last seven years at New College Oxford, where she\\u2019s an Associate Professor of English.
In Private Passions, Hannah Sullivan talks to Michael Berkeley about the time in New York which inspired her prize-winning poems, and why she wanted to capture what it\\u2019s like to be alone and vulnerable in a strange city. She reads from a new poem about Grenfell Tower, which will be published next year. And she reveals a passion for Nina Simone. Other music choices include Strauss\\u2019s \\u201cDer Rosenkavalier\\u201d, the Dvorak Cello Concerto, the Schubert String Quintet, and a setting of a poem by Thomas Campion so perfect she wishes she\\u2019d written it: \\u201cWhat is love but mourning?\\u201d
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 3\\nProduced by Elizabeth Burke
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