麻豆社

To tie in with the NASA's Europa Clipper mission in October 2024, Daljit Nagra selects In the Studio - Ada Limon: A Poem for Nasa.

This features the US Poet Laureate in conversation with Mair Bosworth as she crafts a message to send into the universe.

And Daljit reads from his Poetry Extra Book of the Month: The Roots Belong to You from the Poetry Society.

A poet can鈥檛 sleep. She sits at a desk in a wooden house at the heart of a palm forest, watching the night sky through the window.

The full moon lights up the palm fronds, which dance in the wind. She has been tasked with writing a poem that will be sent into space, to another planet鈥檚 distant moon. What should she say? What is the message in a bottle that she should launch out into the solar system?

How can she begin writing a poem that speaks of the fragile wonders of our home planet? That expresses our hope that there might be other life out there somewhere, in the stars?

In the Studio follows Ada as she crafts an original poem dedicated to NASA鈥檚 Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter鈥檚 icy moon. Her poem will be engraved on the Clipper spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch in October 2024 and travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa - a journey that will last six years.

We follow Ada鈥檚 creative process over several months, from her first meetings with the NASA team, through many drafts of the poem and a visit to NASA鈥檚 jet propulsion laboratory in California to see the Europa Clipper under construction.

Presented and produced by Mair Bosworth.

First broadcast on the 麻豆社 World Service in 2023.

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