BBC Radio 4 Airs New work by Stephanie Rowden & Jennifer Metsker

“The Bird in the Breath and Other Hopeful Cargo”, an audio prose poem by Stamps Associate Professor Stephanie Rowden and Writing Coordinator Jennifer Metsker, will air on BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts on Tuesday, February 21.

Using the form of a ship’s manifest, their audio piece adapts the work of Emily Dickinson into a list poem that reflects on the rich ephemera found in her poems —the feathers, the shadows, the gown —and imagines them being packed up and shipped across time and space, in an echoing cargo hold which contains her tempered hope. Short Cuts commissioned Rowden and Metsker to create the piece for their episode on the theme ​“Hope Dies Last.” 

Listen online: Short Cuts | BBC Radio 4, or subscribe to the podcast.