Dominion: The animals and the poets

Amidst birds passing over or nesting by the Solway Firth in southern Scotland, writer Kayo Chingonyi explores the role of poetry in bringing humans and non-human animals closer. He asks why we turn to poetry to fill the space between human and animal life and discovers ways in which poetry is a powerful human form for entering into the unstructured, more instinctive world of non –human animals. He walks through the wetlands with poet Isabel Galleymore and poetry scholar Sam Solnick. He also talks to newly appointed professor of poetry at Oxford University, Alice Oswald, along with Joshua Bennett and Onno Oerlemans.

The programme features full readings or extracts from the following poems:
Tame by Sarah Howe
Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath
To A Mouse by Robert Burns
Pike by Ted Hughes
Otter by Seamus Heaney
The Kingdom of Sediment by Jacob Polley
Dear Whinchat by Belinda Zhawi
Limpet and Drill Tongued Whelk by Isabel Galleymore
Self Portrait as Periplaneta Americana by Joshua Bennett
Flies by Alice Oswald
The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop
Elephants by Les Murray

Producer: Kate Bland

(Photo: Kayo Chingonyi with Isabel Galleymore, Sam Solnick and Brian Morrell at Caeverlokc Wetlands Centre. Credit: Kate Bland)