Read it, hear it, watch it: a new app brings poetry alive

 
14 September 2012

The Wire star Dominic West is backing a free new app designed to bring poetry to a mass audience.

West is one of more than 30 British actors from Dan Stevens to the late Harold Pinter who read dozens of poems on The Poetry App whose development was begun by the writer Josephine Hart before her death from cancer.

It aims to emulate the success of her long-running Poetry Hours in which she would introduce poems that would then be read aloud by a star cast.

West, who is about to star in a new Jez Butterworth  play, The River, at the Royal Court, said: “I did an English degree but Josephine really got me into poems and poets.

“A lot of people are quite daunted by poetry but the extraordinary thing about the app is you can see the words on the page and then press a play button and hear someone like Roger Moore read Kipling and it brings them alive.”

West will also appear in a new Poetry Week being run by the director Michael Grandage at the Arts Theatre from October 8 to 12.

Figures including Tom Stoppard and Melvyn Bragg will host with readings from actors including Derek Jacobi, Rosamund Pike and Felicity Jones. Tickets are £10.

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