JOSEPHINE HART is a woman on a mission. When she came to England from the Republic of Ireland, working first in publishing, then in theatre and latterly as the creator of novels such as Damage, she noticed something missing in the cultural landscape. Poetry. Sure, there were new poets performing in rooms above pubs, but where were the top-notch actors declaiming fine verses for an audience of paying fans? It brought home to her one of the big differen-ces between England and Ireland.

“The poet in Ireland is an iconic figure, partly because in our history you have so many poets who involved themselves in politics - the Easter Rising proclamation was signed by poets - so that's very much part of our culture and it's one of the reasons I started doing this,” she says.

Hart set up her own West End “Poetry Hour” readings more than 20 years ago. The events have gone from strength to strength, attracting some of the finest actors (all of whom give their services free) and now have spawned two compendiums of classic poems, each with an accompanying CD. The latest, just published, is Words that Burn. And to give you an idea of the calibre of the project, at its launch - a public event at the British Library, as all her evenings are - Sir Bob Geldof, Harriet Walter and Dominic West (fresh from The Wire) read Yeats to an audience that inclu-ded children, scruffy middle-aged couples, a member of the royal family and several captains of industry.

As always at her readings, one of the best bits is her own superb introduction to each poet. These essays, reproduced in each beautiful volume, should be of particular interest to the schoolchildren who will be receiving copies of the book.

“Getting the last book into schools was terrific but this time we're going to concentrate much more on getting it into classrooms. We sent it to the head of English of every school in the country; in addition to new afternoon performances the Library is going to put it all on to its educational website. We want to make poetry a very real power in people's lives.”

Of course, the famous names of readers such as Bono, Emilia Fox and Greg Wise must help to attract young audiences to her events. “I'm sure there are people who come [because of that] but within two minutes the fact that these people really know what they're doing is what will enchant them. What will make a child listen is the undernote they catch: they catch the satire, the wit, the cruelty. And that requires technique. And once a child hears this, and gets the rhythm of, say, Byron, then they can go and read him for themselves. But you need somebody to give you the rhythm.” And finding people to advocate the classics of the canon is not always easy these days, when a certain anti-elitism has grown up among educationists (not to mention children) in thrall to popular culture.

“I've nothing against popular culture,” she says, carefully, “but the idea that there is something divisive about bringing to people the greatest language ever written is utterly wrong. I think it's dying out, but there was a feeling that somehow it almost wasn't politically correct to be interested in serious and great poetry. To some extent it's much more politically acceptable to go to football matches. If a major politician spends his free time in cultural activities, a mood has grown up which implies that there's something wrong with that. In fact, it's what would inform his mind.

“Such prejudice emphatically does not exist in Ireland. There, if we're going to hear something, we want to hear the very best poetry read by the very best actors.”

Hart has great admiration for the actor's craft. As she tells it: “Great poets write complex rhythms. There is a beat within each poem. A trained actor brings an understanding of that. Plus, there's the extraordinary psychological insight that actors have - they feel the poem very deeply. Those things make the experience of listening tremendously enlightening.”

Many people tell her: “I knew that poem but I never really quite understood it until I heard it spoken.” And her strong belief in the sound of poetry as a force for good is infectious. She shares Frost's obsession that “the gold in the ore is the sound” and her face floods with something like the light of evangelism when she exclaims: “Yes! That is what a poet does! A poet looks for the word that sounds through time. Those things come into force when you physically read them out loud.”

Going to a library to listen to an actor read poems is not, she insists, an act of self-improvement. “It's allowing yourself to stop depriving yourself of what is incandescently beautiful in life. To deny yourself that is voluntarily to starve your soul. And if your soul is starved it is impossible to be happy. Modern life makes it hard for people to feed their souls, and that's what people find there. They're on a starvation diet and they come out and they suddenly think: ‘My god! This is a feast!'

“After all, what is it that makes us human? It is language. And poetic language is the most rare form. It's like a gem because the wisdom and insight of the poet is compressed into it. It's a thrilling thing that a line can set off in your mind a whole world of potential experience. Either it inspires you in terms of wanting certain experiences, or it can help you to treasure the experience within those lines. And therefore life, for the short time we're on this Earth, is immensely enriched.”

The children in whose classrooms Hart's books and audio CDs are about to appear will be given the chance to change. To change their attitude to Milton, to Browning, to Christina Ros-setti. And so to life. As Hart says of her virtual charges, warning them not to think that poets live in ivory towers: “There's an awful feeling that poets didn't experience life. But actually they experienced it more deeply than most. Browning: he wasn't recognised for so long, yet he made up his mind to be a poet at 18. And Byron. The wild grace and magnificence of him, yet look at his awful childhood: club foot, hugely overweight, tortured at school ... you know, these are the life problems of children. So just knowing that they persevered and from their life experiences created something that is eternal, well, don't tell me that isn't as exciting a story as anything else you can hear about.”

Words that Burn by Josephine Hart
Virago, £15 Buy the book

Hear readings at the Donmar Warehouse in London on December 1 and January 5, 2009. www.donmarwarehouse.com

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