World Radio Day

Perhaps not well enough advertised - but today turns out to be World Radio Day, a day organised by UNESCO "celebrating radio, why we love it and why we need it today more than ever... a day to remember the unique power of radio to touch lives and bring people together across every corner of the globe" as the website reminds us.

A Murphy wireless - so like ours at home in the 1950s!

I have always been a fan of radio. As a very small child I loved "Listen With Mother", sitting on Mum's lap by the wireless in the living room on weekday afternoons, enchanted by the stories and songs to which we listened; six decades later, radio is my constant companion when I'm driving. Whilst I listen to a lot of music too, short stories, serials, plays are more my thing - and poetry programmes my real favourites. Hearing a poem read is quite a different experience from reading it on the page and often opens up to me a whole new way of understanding it. I find the Scottish Poetry Library website invaluable for its listings of literary broadcasts for the coming week (as well, of course, as for lots of other poetry related information).

So we were a day ahead of ourselves yesterday when several of us from Catchword joined some of Rona Laycock's virtual writing group at Corinium Radio in Cirencester to record our forthcoming programme on "Crime". A broad genre indeed for writers! The hour long programme will have stories both humourous and serious, factual and fanciful and a crime based poem. I am not sure yet when it will air, but if you'd like to hear it (and I promise you it's worth a listen!) do keep an eye on the schedule on the Corinium Radio website.