Sunday Feature

Wisteria - Twilight Poems from the Swamp Country

Sunday 21 October 2007 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)

When poet Kwame Dawes, who was born in Ghana and grew up in Jamaica, moved to Sumter in South Carolina, he recorded interviews with older black people he met, who told him about their lives in the era of segregation. From these recollections, Dawes wrote a collection of poems, Wisteria, which New Orleans composer Kevin Simmonds set to music for an ensemble of 14 black classical musicians.

Using this music, the original interviews, readings of the poems, and conversations and sounds newly recorded in Sumter, this is a poetic reflection on, and a historical account for radio of, the lives of black people in the South after slavery and before Civil Rights.

Duration:

45 minutes

Sunday Feature

Episode and Playlist Information

• 9 Dec 07 The origins of music
• 2 Dec 07 Liquid Living
• 25 Nov 07 Poetic World of Newt
• 18 Nov 07 As Big as Life
• 4 Nov 07 Elgar and Empire
• 28 Oct 07 Mind as Machine
• 21 Oct 07 After slavery
• 14 Oct 07 Chicago
• 7 Oct 07 Manchester
• 30 Sep 07 MindMaps

Sunday Feature pages