The radio documentary portrays Josephine Dickinson in the North Pennines uplands of Cumbria. Having lost her hearing at age six, she entered what she calls “the language poetry” — poetry became her language and her way of relating to the world.
She now listens through 22 implanted electrodes, yet hears birdsong as something perfect and whole. “Hearing is not confined to the ears,” she says. Everyday scenes — feeding her geese, walking by the river, playing the carillon and the organ — are interwoven with her poems and reflections on place, belonging and witness.
The piece also traces an eventful life: arriving in this remote moorland after difficult years, finding love with Douglas, a farmer 45 years her senior, and the quiet grief of outliving him by twenty years.
The open form echoes her perception of her surroundings — moving through sound the way she once moved through silence. The piece reflects on changes in the local ecology, on the diminishing birds she worries about, and on listening beyond the ear.