“Imagine a Grand Picnic”

B. J. Buckley created “Imagine a Grand Picnic” 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, B. J. Buckley writes:

I wanted this poem, from this surprisingly playful technical text written to a young boy, to have play and young boys in it. I began by making lists of radio parts and of the ways the movements described in the text could also be the movements of children. I also thought of the ways in which children personify the technologies they use. I then imagined a group of boys—and personified radio components—playing outside with each other after a picnic, and let the narrative unfold.