Why radio is a surprisingly good medium for talking about art

You might think it a fool’s errand to attempt programmes about art on the wireless. How can you talk about pictures or sculptures or any other visual form without being able to see them? But features on artists and their work can have a surprising resonance on radio precisely because without any images the programme-makers and their listeners are forced to work harder, and to look beyond the canvas to the back story, the purpose of a self-portrait, a seascape, a domestic interior. You could say that’s why the great film Mr Turner lacks a certain meaning. The visuals are stunning but the dialogue disappoints. At the same time radio itself has always been a picture-inducing medium, creating still lifes in the mind

In The Still Life Poet, which goes out on Monday on Radio 4, the Scottish Makar Liz Lochhead portrays the last years of William Soutar, who for 13 years was confined to bed, crippled and in pain. He had been one of those blessed people, gifted at school and handsome and sporty. But he held from birth the genes of ankylosing spondylitis which began to manifest its wasting, disabling symptoms after Soutar suffered a bout of food poisoning while serving in the navy during the first world war. By 1930 he was bedridden and until his death in 1943 he lived in one room, unable, latterly, to move even his neck. He became, says Lochhead bluntly, ‘pretty much a living statue’. His bed was surrounded by mirrors, carefully angled so that he could see his visitors and communicate face-to-face without being able to move himself or lift his head from the pillow. Yet he continued to write poetry filled with joy, humour and the keenest observation.