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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Poetry Extra

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly opportunity for listeners to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

A brand new poetry slot on Radio 4 Extra gives listeners a weekly opportunity to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

Poetry Extra: Electric Polyolbion

15/01/2017

Electric Polyolbion

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Electric Polyolbion

Poet and broadcaster Paul Farley's envisages Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion.

4 Extra Debut. Part poetry and part national topological survey with a seam of encounters along the way; poet and broadcaster Paul Farley's envisages Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion.

BBC Radio 4's Poet in Residence, Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive with Electric Polyolbion. 

Part-poetry and part-national topological survey with a rich seam of encounters along the way, Paul Farley reimagines Michael Drayton's sprawling, extraordinary Poly-Olbion, first published in 1612. 

The term Poly-Olbion suggests 'many Albions', the plurality of place, and Drayton described his own project as "...a chorographicall [sic] description of tracts, rivers, mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned isle... with intermixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarities, pleasures and commodities of the same." 

Drayton's Poly-Olbion is a remarkable poem: 30,000 lines, arranged in 30 sections or 'songs', describing the geography and history of England and Wales county by county. References to place are clear and precise. 

The Electric Poly-Olbion follows the same topographies as Drayton's work, and Paul uses its precursor to create a new version out of our contemporary landscape that incorporates and synthesizes historical, scientific, political, literary, pop-cultural and autobiographical dimensions into the imaginative region of the long poem. 

As he travels the country and meeting other local writers along the way, Paul writes his own long form verse in and around the places and references of Drayton's original: the same landscapes, two wildly different time frames. 

Producer: Simon Hollis
Made for BBC Radio 4 by Brook Lapping Productions. First broadcast in 2010.

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