Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Poet Dajlit Nagra revisits the Â鶹ԼÅÄ's poetry archive and selects A Manual for Dreaming Womxn - in which poet Rachel Long demonstrates how to turn dreams into poetry.

What’s the most compelling dream you’ve ever had?

Poet Rachel Long, in this workshop-for-radio, leads the listener in a dreamy guide – how to turn our night-time sequences into a poetic form.

With the help of poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir, poet and playwright Caroline Bird and literary editor Kishani Widyaratna, Rachel explores the links between dreams and poetry, including her own. How might we transform our sleep-time wanderings into something more than just a funny story for the morning?

Dreams can be many things - they are narratives constructed and experienced in image; a portal into our unconscious and, more simply, a way to keep our mind occupied while sleeping. But Rachel argues, we can also harness their metaphoric capabilities to deepen our understanding of poetry, and the process of writing poems. Not only that, but poets really can use their unconscious as a guide for their writing.

Rachel Long is a poet and founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, which is housed at Southbank Centre, in London. Her debut collection, My Darling from the Lions, was nominated for the Forward Prize for best first collection.

Presented by Rachel Long

Produced by Eliza Lomas

Mixed by Olga M Reed

A Boom Shakalaka production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4, first broadcast in 2020.

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