大象传媒

In the second of his two programmes looking at the skies, the poet Michael Symmons Roberts examines the stars and how they influence our poetry, faith and even our lives.

In contrast to the moon, covered in last week鈥檚 programme, the stars have a very different image. Michael explains, 鈥淔or a start, the temperature is different. If the moon is often characterised as cold, mysterious but ultimately dispassionate, untroubled by the vicissitudes of life on earth, then the stars have come to symbolise something like the opposite - they signal aspiration and hope, they shine, they bring you luck. They look down on you with promise, even with care. And they can guide you too.鈥�

Although science has taught us so much more about the stars, they are still a great mystery. For Michael, 鈥渙ur knowledge of the sheer distance between us and the stars, the time it takes for their light to reach us, makes them unimaginably other, in both time and space. And it makes their light itself, the fact that we can see them at all, a relic and a mystery鈥�.

Michael reflects on a visit to the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank and reminds us that we are all aliens - made of stardust. With the poetry of Alice Oswald and RS Thomas and the music of Moby and Messiaen, he takes us on a journey through the heavens.

Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI production for 大象传媒 Radio 4