The poetry of the Trafford Centre

Academics at Manchester Metropolitan University are taking a closer look at the Intu Trafford Centre in a BBC Radio 4 documentary.

Michael Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at the Manchester Writing School, will be looking at the shopping centre as a unique poetic and architectural statement in the radio show The Stately Pleasure Dome airing on Thursday 23 March at 11.30am.

Manchester School of Art historian Rosemary Shirley also features as a guest on the show.

When it was built in 1998, the Trafford Centre was the largest shopping centre ever seen in the UK. The landmark attracts more than thirty million visitors a year, and displays over two thousand works of art.

The main dome of this shopping centre is one of its most evocative and striking features. Michael has long thought of it as a relative of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'stately pleasure dome' from his great poem 'Kubla Khan'. Michael said: “The centre has uncanny echoes of 'Kubla Khan' - from the dome itself, through to the 'intermittent fountains' and the presiding figure of 'Kubla Khan'.”

For the show, Michael met staff, customers and the architects and designers involved in the creation of the Centre. He also ventures behind its facades to ask whether we've been looking at this building in the right way, and to find inspiration for new poetry.