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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Consider the Lilies

Big Business, Nebraska

08/03/2015

Consider the Lilies

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Consider the Lilies

Samira Ahmed explores representations of flowers and people's relationships with them.

Samira Ahmed explores people's relationship with flowers. How have certain blooms been represented in the arts and thought to embody emotional, spiritual and philosophical ideas?

Samira Ahmed explores our representations of flowers, and our relationships with them.

Focusing on the flowers that have had a particular importance in her own life, she considers the meanings and cultural resonances of several species - passion-flower, bluebells, tulips and the exotically perfumed champa flower or frangipani.

Through music and poetry she explores how certain blooms have been thought to embody emotional, spiritual and philosophical ideas - and been used and subverted by artists, musicians and writers around the globe. She investigates how different countries have developed complex codes of communication through the gift of flowers and asks if sometimes it is better not to 'say it with flowers'. How can the giving and receiving of floral tributes be transformed from a simple gesture of affection to one of potential threat or insult?

The programme includes poetry by Sylvia Plath, Wendy Cope and Rabindranath Tagore, along with music from Katherine Jenkins, Ben E. King and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

The readers are Olivia Onyehara, Matthew Wynn, and Haruka Kuroda.

Producer: Lucy Dichmont
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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