Music and poetry is a potent combination. Like music and images, they are entangled together in forms of exuberant brain-pleasuring or indeed heart-wrenching experiences that seem to make life just that little bit more purposeful. When I was growing up, my parents used to play us a vinyl 45 of this elderly gentleman reciting his poetry to music; crackling clicks of the record against the slightly eccentric English whimsical tones, set against clarinets and bands that sounded like something out of Wind of the Willows . There was a resonance with The Beatles' Yellow Submarine-type of pieces. Whatever the comparisons, it was bizarre. Utterly strange. And yet also rather alluring and admittedly, catchy. The 45 my parents enjoyed playing us so much was the single release of "A Shropshire Lad ", by John Betjeman. Already a fan of his poetry, this particular poem (and single) was all about the place where my mother grew up, somewhere that rarely got any kind of limelight. For m...