The Radio of the Future

Available for over a year

A new radio poem from Paul Farley marks the centenary of BBC radio and takes its inspiration from a 1921 essay by Russian futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, ‘The Radio of the Future’. Khlebnikov's essay imagined all the world-changing possibilities of this new invention, uniting the whole of mankind through the sharing of knowledge, ideas and art. Farley’s poem conjures three voices - past, present and future. In the past, Velimir Khlebnikov (Rad Kaim) sits in his remote telegraph office in the Caucasus, broadcasting his vision of what radio could be. He’s able to communicate with a young woman called Heed (Fanta Barrie), although he doesn’t realise that she is a voice from the future, another displaced person on a planet in crisis. Radio, for her, is a vital link to other humans and to lost histories. Overhearing both of them is a Listener from 2022 (Paul Farley), who has his own thoughts on the place of radio in human culture. A moving tribute to our relationship with radio and its potential to connect us across time and space. Velimir.....Rad Kaim Heed.....Fanta Barrie The Listener.....Paul Farley Sound design.....Nigel Lewis Directed by Emma Harding for BBC Audio Drama Wales.