Between the Ears - Miss Birdie's Letter

Poet Daljit Nagra selects Between the Ears - Miss Birdie's Letter taking poet Karen McCarthy Woolf to Kingston, Jamaica.

Karen follows the trail of a letter sent to her Jamaican grandmother by her Church, commending her on 67 years of faithful service.

The trip takes her back to her father’s village, and to 1918, when her grandmother sets off for downtown Kingston from the poor country parish of St Catherine, a district that had been under a state of emergency as part of a government crackdown on gang violence.

What would life have been like for a rural migrant at the end of the First World War? And how does that compare to today?

Written and performed by Karen McCarthy Woolf.

Pastor…..Wyllie Longmore

Sound design Sharon Hughes

Producer: Susan Roberts
Director: Sharon Sephton

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in October 2018.