Episode 4

Why do we apologise for the wrongs others have done us or for events that are outside our control? Poet Helen Mort continues her journey exploring the complexities and subtexts of apology, drawing on both her own lifelong tendency to over-apologise and on remarkable poetic apologies. She reflects on the correlation between apology and feeling 'at fault' and asks whether women experience this more acutely than men. Women are said to apologise more than men. Is this connected to the way they are made to feel responsible for their appearance, asks Helen? She asks whether we can apologise too much, examining this through Alan Buckley's poem Being a Beautiful Woman, her own poem My Fault and first play Medusa, where the protagonist says a bitter 'sorry' for the things that have happened to her, including her rape by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Producer Zita Adamson An Overtone Production for BBC Radio 3