Mother Tongue - Bodies in Motion

Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects episode one of Mother Tongue - a globe-trotting poetry series.

Poet Helen Mort hears poetry in Arabic, German and Spanish while thinking about the phrase 'Bodies in Motion'. Helen discovers how movement through space and time filters through the work of some very different poets.

She meet Syrian poet Golan Haji in Paris. He's drawn inspiration from many sources, including Bill Viola's video art and a pet ram. Being multilingual, for him, every piece of writing is an act of translation. They meet up with veteran American poet and translator Marilyn Hacker, to hear her version of a Haji poem and talk about the friendship struck up through this translation partnership.

A journey to the centre of the Earth; watching the Berlin Wall fall on a badly tuned TV; and a futuristic German language, have all inspired poems by the compelling German poet and performer, Ulrike Almut Sandig.

Exploring the fascinating process of translating a poem into another language, Helen takes part in a poetry translation workshop at the Poetry Translation Centre in London.

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in July 2017.