In this episode, poet and retired schoolmaster David Day contributes to the theme of Ted Hughes and religion with a commentary on Hughes's early poem 'The Casualty' (The Hawk In The Rain (1957) Faber & Faber: p.49; Ted Hughes: Collected Poems ed. Paul Keegan (2003) Faber & Faber: p.42).

David took a BA in English and History at Durham where he regularly turned out for the university cricket and hockey first XIs and was awarded full colours. He was an English teacher in Yorkshire for forty-two years, HMC representative on the National Curriculum, Key Stage 3 English consultative committee, and chair of the local 16+ English Examination panel.

David's collection of poems, Brass Rubbings was published by Carcanet in 1975, and a review in the Guardian praised David's poems as being "of rare delicacy of design". A further collection, After Midnight Mass, has been completed. David's poems have been published in the TLS, New York Times, Critical Quarterly, PN Review, Encounter, PEN New Poems and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.  

The opening and closing music is from Beethoven's String Quartet No 14, opus 131, performed by the Orion String Quartet. (The extract is reproduced under Creative Commons licence IMSLP: Creative Commons Atribution Non-commercial No Derivative 3.0.)

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