大象传媒

Escaping a war zone, a man tries to cross the sea on a flimsy raft. It disintegrates in a storm and he is washed ashore. A kind woman gives him clothes and people help him on his way. This is one episode in The Odyssey, but the parallels between Homer's ancient epic and what has been happening recently in the same region, are striking. When the Cyclops asks Odysseus what he is called he replies, "My name is Nobody."

Among the refugees, exiles and migrants who have arrived recently, and the offspring of those who came earlier, are poets. Radio 4 has commissioned 10 such writers, from various diasporas, to create new radio poems written in response to The Odyssey. Daljit Nagra, Radio 4's Poet in Residence, is curating The Odyssey Project and introduces the poets and the context of their pieces in relation to Homer.

In the first programme Mir Mahfuz Ali, who almost drowned in a whirlpool when he was forced to flee Bangladesh, responds to the Scylla and Charybdis episode, when Odysseus finds himself between a monster on rock and another in a whirlpool. Here, Ali creates a modern boat crossing, such as those we've been hearing about in the news for the past few years. Woodisi, poet and player of the oud, risks the perilous crossing aboard the Siren, in the hands of the dubious boat owner, Solyman.

Mir Mahfuz Ali comments himself, but because his voice was damaged when he was shot in the throat by a Bangladeshi policeman for singing anti war songs, the actor Zubin Varla reads Woodisi's words. Milad Yousofi plays the oud.

Producer: Julian May.