In the Studio: Ada Limon
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the Studio follows US poet laureate Ada Limón as she crafts an original poem dedicated to Nasa’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s icy moon. Her poem will be engraved on the Clipper spacecraft, which will launch in 2024 and travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa - a journey that will last six years. We follow Ada’s creative process over several months, from her first meetings with the Nasa team, through many drafts of the poem and a visit to Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in California to see the Europa Clipper under construction. In this update, we hear the finished poem.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The HappyPod is a special weekly episode from the Global News podcast bringing new positive stories and uplifting interviews from around the world. |
| 0:09.0 | Thousands of lives are being saved by bandages that can stop heavy bleeding in less than a minute. |
| 0:14.0 | It's there to save lives, it's great to go to bed night knowing that we can help. |
| 0:17.0 | Listen now by searching for the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:23.0 | Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:28.0 | The series that takes you inside the creative process of some of the world's leading artists. |
| 0:33.0 | I'm Maya Bosworth and for the past six months I've been following the United States poet laureate Ada Limone as she works on what might be the most inspiring and daunting commission of her life. |
| 0:45.0 | In 2022 she was asked by NASA the American Space Agency to write a poem that will be sent into space. |
| 0:53.0 | There is a spacecraft called the Clipper which is going to the second moon of Jupiter and the second moon of Jupiter is a sister water planet. |
| 1:07.0 | NASA is sending the spacecraft up and they wanted something to be on it that's like a message. |
| 1:14.0 | It's maybe the most incredible prompt I've ever received you know. |
| 1:20.0 | We'd like to continue NASA's legacy of sending messages beyond the earth. |
| 1:27.0 | As we thought about who might author such a message it seemed perfect to ask the poet laureate to send a poem to communicate the sense of wonder of exploration of another water world. |
| 1:44.0 | Last time we spoke to Ada for in the studio she was just completing her work on this project. |
| 1:50.0 | Now it's ready for launch and we'll be hearing her incredible poem in full at the end of this special update episode. |
| 1:57.0 | First let's find out more about Ada and why she's the perfect writer to be interested with this unique mission. |
| 2:05.0 | Hello. How nice to see you. Hello. Hello. Hello. I love your red micro heart. |
| 2:11.0 | Oh thank you. It's very jolly. It is. |
| 2:15.0 | The first time Ada and I meet on a video call I feel like I'm meeting an old friend. |
| 2:20.0 | I will say that I've got my dog with me and hopefully she wants more. |
| 2:24.0 | I think Ada probably has this effect on a lot of people who've read her poetry. |
| 2:28.0 | She has that magical and generous skill of making you feel that a poem was written for you that she has somehow seen into your most privately held feelings and expressed something tender |
... |
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