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 - Double Takes

Mother Tongue - Double Takes

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Mother Tongue - Double Takes

Daljit Nagra selects gems from the BBC's poetry archive.

Daljit Nagra selects Mother Tongue - Double Takes with poets from Poland, Cuba and Taiwan. With Imtiaz Dharker. From 2019.

Globe-trotting poetry series, presented by poet Imtiaz Dharker.

In this episode, Imtiaz hears poets from Poland, Cuba and Taiwan - in their original language and in translation. Starting with the phrase Double Takes, she reflects on how these three poets have the knack of making their readers look, and look again, at the world around them - shifting perspectives with their idiosyncratic takes on details and experiences.

Imtiaz speaks to Adam Zagajewski, widely considered to be the leading Polish poet of his generation. He writes with great humanity and wry humour, with the ability to elevate the most ordinary things, such as airports and sandals, to epic levels. He takes a walk around his home city, Krakow, and talks about his approach to writing poetry. With poems from his collection, Asymmetry, translated by Clare Cavanagh.

We also hear poems from Legna Rodriguez Iglesias, an up-and-coming Cuban voice, now living in Miami. Her intense and sometimes unnerving work often has an absurdist focus on close-up details. Imtiaz speaks to the poet Abigail Parry who, with Serafina Vick, has translated a new selection of Rodriguez’s poems in a collection called A Little Body are Many Parts.

Finally, there’s Amang Hung, a Taiwanese poet and filmmaker who writes with playful and inventive flair about nature, the digital world and her life in Taipei. She reads poems from her collection Raised by Wolves. The English translations are by Steve Bradbury.

Reader: Vera Chok.

Producer: Caroline Hughes

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2019.

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