Metamorphosis and human transformation explored in poet’s radio documentary series

Modern Metamorphoses concluded on Sunday, and is available to listen to again via BBC Sounds

Professor Michael Symmons Roberts has fronted a documentary series on the fascination poets have with metamorphosis and the body.

Airing on BBC Radio 4, the Costa Award-winning poet and Manchester Writing School lecturer examines classic works from Homer and Ovid to Shakespeare and Kafka to see how they dealt with human transformation.

The three-part series Modern Metamorphoses also features reflections from leading contemporary poets, including fellow Manchester Metropolitan University lecturers Andrew McMillan and Helen Mort.

Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, said: “Poems of shape-shifting, of bodies transformed into other bodies or creatures or objects, are so central to poetry that most poets do it without naming it. It was a privilege to be commissioned to explore this territory on Radio 4, and to interview such a range of great contemporary poets.”

Over the course of the series, Professor Symmons Roberts looked at how poets today are engaging with the theme of transformation, whether that is through re-imagining classical works from a feminist perspective or using it as a means to explore identity in the 21st century.

It was a privilege to be commissioned to explore this territory on Radio 4, and to interview such a range of great contemporary poets.

The first episode explores the reasons that metamorphosis was so enduring for writers in Ancient Greece and Rome, while part two deals with the possibilities that technology and science offer in terms of future transformations. Part three considers the changes that take place in our bodies over the course of a lifetime.

Part two features interviews with McMillan and Mort, who consider how bodily transformations have become so much a part of our modern lives - in the form of Marvel movies and body-building, for example, or tattooing.

Modern Metamorphoses concluded on Sunday, and is available to listen to again via BBC Sounds.