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The Odyssey Project: My Name Is Nobody

Drama

Writers from various diasporas create new radio poems in response to Homer's The Odyssey.

Writers from various diasporas create new radio poems in response to Europe's second oldest poem, Homer's The Odyssey.

The Odyssey Project: My Name Is Nobody: Series 1

Inua Ellams

Maeve Bluebell Wells

Tom Forrister

Julian May

The Odyssey Project: My Name Is Nobody: Series 1: Circe

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Drama: Classic & Period

24/04/2017

Circe

Series 1

BBC Radio 4 - The Odyssey Project: My Name Is Nobody, Series 1, CirceSearch BBC

Inua Ellams sets the Circe episode of The Odyssey in a bus stop and a warehouse club today

Circe turns Odysseus's men into pigs, the god Hermes gives him a herb to make him immune. Poet Inua Ellams turns this into a modern story of enchantment, desire and disenchantment.

Inua Ellam, who was born in Nigeria, begins the second week of responses by 10 contemporary poets, all refugees, exiles, migrants or their offspring, to Homer's Odyssey, which is full of parallels with the world today. Ellams's poem is inspired by the episode where the temptress, the witch Circe, turns Odysseus' men into pigs. As Odysseus goes to rescue his men, he's advised by the god Hermes that he should eat a certain herb to protect himself. In Ellam's update, all street rhythms and rhymes, Odysseus's ship is a broken-down bus, Circe's palace a warehouse club and Hermes is as much a dealer as a god. 

With Inua Ellams himself, Maeve Bluebell Wells as Circe and Tom Forrister, Hermes.

Producer: Julian May.

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Writers create new radio poems in response to Homer's The Odyssey.

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Circe

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