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A Sleepwalk On The Severn

A Sleepwalk On The Severn

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation

Summary

BBC Radio 4's extraordinary evocation of the experience of moonrise over the Severn Estuary, by award-winning poet Alice Oswald. Originally broadcast as the 'Afternoon Play' on 10 March 2011. Set to original music by Roger Goula, the subject of 'A Sleepwalk on the Severn' is moonrise, which happens five times in different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living some dead, all based on real people from the Severn catchment, talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. Performed by Ron Cook, Sam Dale, Emma Fielding, Tom Goodman-Hill, James Laurenson and Helen Longworth. Music composed by Roger Goula and performed by the Raven Quartet and Rowland Sutherland.

About the author

Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her collections include Dart, which won the 2002 T.S. Eliot Prize, Woods etc. (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Hawthornden Prize), Weeds and Wildflowers (Ted Hughes Award), Memorial (Warwick Prize for Writing), and Falling Awake, which won the 2016 Costa Poetry Award and the Griffin Prize for Poetry. She was elected as the Oxford University Professor of Poetry in 2019.
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