Rita Dove

Sue Lawley's guest this week is the poet Rita Dove. The first African-American to become the US Poet Laureate, Rita Dove was brought up to believe that education was the key to the Great American Dream. As a child she would lose herself in the local library, but she learned the art of story-telling from her aunts as they swapped tales about the Great Depression, civil rights, and, of course, motherhood. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett Book: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Luxury: Ballroom and robotic dance instructor

You can listen to Rita Dove online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Rita Dove is an episode from Desert Island Discs: Archive 1996-2000 by BBC.

This episode is 36:15 long.

This episode was published on Aug 22, 1999.

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