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WB Yeats set to top the French pop charts THEY are among the finest English-language poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, endowed with rare insight and sensitivity. Now WB Yeats, WH Auden, and several others have taken on an unlikely new guise - as a continental European pop hit. Their poems - along with those by two British poets, Walter de la Mare and Christina Rossetti, and two Americans, Dorothy Parker and Emily Dickinson - are likely to enter the Top 10 in France and Germany next week. After being set to music by Carla Bruni (39), the former fashion model, they could even make No1, according to the Paris-based record company Naive. The album, 'No Promises', which was released this week, has divided music critics between supporters hailing a new departure for Europop and detractors perplexed by haunting English verse half-sung and half-spoken in a sensual voice accompanied by folk guitars. On radio stations, her version of 'Those Dancing Days Are Gone', Yeats's poem about decay and loss, was vying for airtime with the rock idol Johnny Hallyday and the tennis player-turned-singer, Yannick Noah. Bruni said that she had wanted to write the album herself and had begun reading English-language poetry for inspiration. "Every three pages I came across a little gem. Spontaneously, I put them to music. It was not really a concept, more of an impulsive reaction to these poems which leapt off the page at me," she said. Irish Independent 20/01/2007
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