Stories In Verse - The Odyssey

The poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's poetry archive and selects Stories in Verse: The Odyssey, with an extended extract read by Denis Quilley.

Odysseus has anchored his fleet at a small Mediterranean island and sails to the mainland where he meets the Cyclops....

A tale of high adventure, Homer's epic poem The Odyssey follows Odysseus, King of Ithaca, as he attempts to return home after the siege of Troy. Nothing is really known about Homer, a poetic genius of exceptional power and range, who lived at the end of the 8th century BC.

The poem, along with Homer's tale of the siege of Troy, The Iliad, come from the oral tradition of storytelling. They were intended to be sung or chanted to an audience, accompanied by a lyre, presumably in instalments, as there are over 12,000 lines in The Odyssey alone.

Homer's The Odyssey, translated by William Cowper in 1791.

Extract read by Denis Quilley.

First broadcast on the BBC World Service in August 1995.