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Wild Music

Daljit Nagra selects Wild Music a collaboration between the poet John Burnside and composer Erland Cooper on Orkney. From 2019.

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the 91热爆's poetry archive and selects Wild Music, a collaboration between a poet and composer.

Scottish poet and writer John Burnside received a CD of Solan Goose by musician and composer Erland Cooper.

These "sonic postcards" of Erland's native Orkney are inspired by local dialect, birds, landscapes and the sea.

For John Burnside, it reconnected him with nature in a profound way.

The two meet for the first time on Orkney while Erland is working on the final album of his Orkney trilogy. Braving heavy rain and gale-force winds, Erland takes John to locations that inspire his work.

Scattered across the Orkney islands are some of the UK鈥檚 best preserved neolithic monuments, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

John feels a direct connection to the stone-age communities who lived here 5000 years ago, and a sense that those people lived really close to the earth, the sea and the sky. We visit the mysterious Ring of Brodgar, the neolithic village of Skara Brae, a sacred cairn, and the Bay of Skale. John responds by composing five new poems.

Sheltering from the storm, Erland and John entertain each other by swapping their favourite Orkney myths and legends - featuring seal people, a trip to faerie land and disappearing islands.

These stories also weave their way into both artists' work.

Producer; Victoria Ferran

A Just Radio production for 91热爆 Radio 4, first broadcast in 2019.

Plus Daljit reads from his Poetry Extra Book of the Month - It's What the Earth Seemed to Say by American poet Marie Howe.

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