Jade Cuttle

The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has just published a new verse translation of the poem, and he's with us to talk about what those ancient clay tablets have to say to a modern audience.

Also looking to clay and earth and silt and soil and mud, For inspiration is the poet Jade Cuttle, currently writer in residence at the Museum of Writing and someone fascinated by what survives of us through deep time.

And with them, Professor Trevor Cox, whose expertise is in what makes it possible for us to have conversations at all or hear poetry in the first place.

Sound.

And I think this might be the origin of the idea of the snake having eternal life because it sheds its skin.

There are these wonderful intersections with biblical kind of lore and biblical legend too.

Jade Cuttle, you have this concept of time sickness, which as I understand it is the kind of vertigo that is induced by looking back.

This presumably induces a bit of time sickness in you, does it, this poem?