大象传媒

The poet Dajlit Nagra revisits the 大象传媒's poetry archive and selects A Dream Vision of Our Times - an exploration of the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Daljit also shares a favourite, recently published poetry collection and reads a poem from it.

This month's Poetry Extra Book of the Month is: Five Fifty Five by Maura Dooley.

A Dream Vision of Our Times - Writer Henry Eliot explores Geoffrey Chaucer鈥檚 surreal Dream Vision poems and their contemporary relevance.

Chaucer, the father of English literature, is best known for his long narrative poem聽The Canterbury Tales, but his witty and imaginative dream visions are also wild, funny and surprisingly relevant today. Henry Eliot considers three of these medieval poems -聽The Parliament of Fowls,聽The Book of the Duchess聽and聽The House of Fame - and how they changed the course of English poetry.

They all begin with a narrator falling asleep, before quickly slipping into surreal and fantastical dream worlds, where talking birds debate the nature of true love, eagles fly into space and men grieve in forests. There are desert wildernesses, ice mountains, glass temples, wicker houses and emerald palaces.

Chaucer depicts the cacophonous worlds of rumour, debate, gossip and hearsay, invoking uncanny parallels with today鈥檚 world of social media frenzies, celebrity culture, post-truth and聽fake news. But he also explores the complex and messy nature of psychology, experience and what it means to be human.

A Just Radio production for 大象传媒 Radio 4, first broadcast in 2019.