“At Radio Central”

Susan Kay Anderson created “At Radio Central” from John Mills’ Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922). Please click here to read.

About the poem and the process of composing it, Susan Kay Anderson writes:

This poem is created from John Mills’ Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922). The first letters are very emotional sounding (to me) and hint at an inner disturbance or trauma from war times (WWI) that John Mills would probably want to tell his son about but can’t. Instead, he writes down all he knows about radio technology. As I read these letters, I felt attracted to the dramatic conflict that seemed to be happening with what was being shared and what was being held back. It felt like a code I could break, but ultimately couldn’t. I couldn’t understand radio technology and couldn’t understand the trauma of war and separation. Yet, I felt close to the war while reading these and intensely concerned with “winning” or being able to succeed in understanding the science presented until my brain was being its own receiver/transmitter of waves and electrons. I selected words which spoke to me in a sort of coded language that sounded scientific but was very emotional.

Also by Susan Kay Anderson at Heron Tree: “The Problem” and “Digression.”