Reverie - Experiments in Living
from The Verb Hosted by BBC Radio 4
Ian McMillan explores the dream like experience of 'reverie' - with Terrance Hayes, Bea Roberts, Rachel Genn and Ira Lightman. What does reverie mean to writers in 2021? Is it simply a waste of time and a state of procrastination? Novelist and neuroscientist Rachel Genn argues that a reverie can be a creative state, a propping open of the self, which lets the world 'sniff around'. The state of reverie was important to Wanda Coleman, the American poet known as 'the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles'. Coleman died in 2013, and her selected poems 'Wicked Enchantment' has just been published. The collection is edited and introduced by the poet Terrance Hayes, who joins us to celebrate her work, and to share one of her 'American sonnets', which inspired the form of his own collection 'American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin'. ' How does modern technology affect reverie? Can we truly get lost in our thoughts in the age of the 'doomscroll' and the 'rabbit-hole' of the internet? Theatre-maker Bea Roberts has written us a short audio piece taking us on an online reverie through auto-harps and silk pyjamas. A Verb about 'reverie' would not be complete without a reverie about the word 'reverie' itself. Our regular guest, the poet Ira Lightman lets us dream ourselves into its heart with a new poem commissioned for The Verb - and invites our guests to collaborate with him on air. And do we need a more approachable sounding word for 'reverie' ?
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