Poetry Extra: Mother Tongue

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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: Mother Tongue - The Observing Eye

Mother Tongue - The Observing Eye

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Mother Tongue - The Observing Eye

Daljit Nagra selects the very best programmes from the BBC's poetry archive.

Daljit Nagra selects Mother Tongue ep 2/6 in which Helen Mort explores exciting voices from around the world.  From 2017.

Poet Daljit Nagra explores the BBC's poetry archive and selects Mother Tongue ep 2/6 the globe-trotting poetry series presented by Helen Mort. 

Poet Helen Mort explores exciting voices from around the world. This week, she hears poems in Persian, Spanish, German and Chinese - and in translation - all inspired by the everyday objects and people around them. She considers how through the observing eye of poetry, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Tea bags, mushrooms and mosquitoes have all inspired German poet Jan Wagner. His poems give surprising perspectives on the most commonplace objects - they are witty, compassionate and novel. Wagner reads from his collection Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees, and talks about the process of translation between German and English.

Nicknamed the Poet of Objects in his native Iran, Iraj Ziayi writes about ordinary household items - chairs, slippers - with heightened intensity. In his poem Six Green Polish Chairs, a collection of childhood memories are triggered by the sight of a particular shade of green. Alireza Abiz translates from the Persian.

Helen Mort travels to Oxford to speak to Theophilus Kwek. Kwek is a young poet and translator from Singapore, whose version of Moving House by Malayan-born poet Wong Yoon Wah, recently won second place in the Stephen Spender prize for poetry in translation. Moving House explores the ordinary details of a house move, with a fascinating personal and political subtext.

Finally, there's poetry by Oscar Cruz, direct from the streets of Santiago de Cuba. Speaking to Cruz's translator Serafina Vick, Helen Mort learns about his mission to bring the everyday life and language of his city - in all its frank reality - into his poems. Muy caliente!


A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

First broadcast in 2017.

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