In the ancient world people read aloud. Their habit was to hear what they were seeing, a habit that is not generally followed now, although the experience of reading can be enhanced by the speech. Words on the tongue, words in the ear flow into the body of the reader. The eye alone may be at some distance, but when heard it is there within one’s head.

How a poet reads a poem is integral to the experience of poetry. How might Coleridge have sounded? We cannot be entirely sure. But recorded sound has given the world an invaluable experience, a privilege we take for granted until we reflect on how things once were.

Perhaps there was greater concentration when there were less distractions. Flashing images and insistent rhythms were not so ubiquitous until recent times. There are many claims on our attention whether they are worthy of our attention or not. To receive anything worthwhile we need that rich (and increasingly rare) faculty of concentration. We need to listen.

The capability of listening is not acquired naturally. To hear is a given. The capacity to listen is something acquired. It has to be learned. The power of concentrated listening demands much while offering more. We surrender our autonomy in return for the enhancement of our senses and sensibilities. Nothing is worth doing that asks nothing of us.

Listening to words is a different experience from reading them. If the performance is live, as in the theatre, then we cannot pause and reflect as we can in reading. There is a flow of sound that we must make sense of immediately. The experience has some similarity to music, but words carry meaning. Though they may exceed the bounds of conceptual thought they are grounded in the nature of language.

Poetry in an unfamiliar tongue may sound well simply by the way it is spoken. The rhythms, the inflexions, the resonances all contribute to a means of receiving something appreciated if not understood. The experience is not rational. But to dismiss it as merely emotional is to ignore the depth of sensory reception. The words become a kind of music. That musicality is essential to literature. It arises from the intensity of form. The words are chosen with care. They are chosen for their sound as well as for their meaning. There words that inform, and there are words that enrich.

The words that enrich may hold one’s attention even in the world of tasks and duties. A song gives pause for thought, leaping from the background of work or leisure and commanding attention. The oral tradition is a long one. In the ancient world poetry was created to be heard rather than read. Bob Dylan in his Nobel lecture claims his place in that tradition.

The preservation of literature was of less concern when oral traditions were strong. But even then. Writing does not present the immediacy of speech. It does create history from the cacophony of daily life. The permanence of print is invaluable in the transmission of literature across the centuries. There is a long conversation whose origins are a remote ancestry that continues to impress vitally on our sensibilities. We are those ancient places even as technology advances with a disturbing rapidity.

It may be credible to see the continuance of oral traditions as an affirmation of human communication in an age of machines that can think but can neither feel nor imagine. The human voice acts as resistance to soulless technology.

Technology, of course, should not be regarded as entirely negative. The mindful use of technology is invaluable in preserving the human voice, and in broadcasting its sound beyond the confines of a time and a place. This is generally an advance. Technology can be exploited by tyrants, but that is true of so many things. Generally civilisation has advanced because we can record and broadcast sound.

The medium of radio, once it was available, soon gained a position within society. It spread the word. Inevitably the dissemination of news, comment and conversation led to the development of a radio literature. Journalism and entertainment were not sufficient to establish the sense of a broadcast culture which needed substance beyond the light and popular base. A city’s dark alleys may lead to a fine cathedral. The opportunities for an aural literature to speak beyond the confines of time and space were unprecedented and formidable in their scope.

‘By being set down at a microphone, especially if this happens at all regularly, the poet is brought into a new relationship with his work, not otherwise attainable in our time and country.’ George Orwell Poetry and the Microphone. Orwell was intolerant of the trivia and ephemera occupying much of the airtime then as now. Orwell, who had some broadcasting experience, amplified his doubts in sceptical and pessimistic reflections on society. We need not share Orwell’s world-view to accept the validity of his concern for radio’s cultural possibilities.

A debate has raged for many years on the nature of radio literature. The term ‘radio literature’ is itself disputed. Some prefer the penumbra of ‘radio drama’ for a broad range of expressive work. The problem of vocabulary is that the terms are borrowed from theatre. The borrowing can take on the deadweight of an imposition. This accounts for the confusion and controversy. A reasoned consideration may find itself an inquisitive traveller in a zone of conflict. The air is charged with intense, even violent, emotions. This cut and thrust may be considered stimulating intellectually and creatively, but only to an open mind.

It is not simply a problem of vocabulary. The nature of the genre is the question. The writing is no longer pinned down in print. It floats through the air. The words you have written are spoken directly to the world. The human voice interprets the signs inscribed on the page. The experience is age-old, yet with technology relatively new.

Oral literature has a more defined social role than the printed word. Radio literature is surely integral to a common culture, but it is contrary to the undemanding element in populism. Radio literature is not of the moment. It is aware of the history of the spoken word, the democracy of the tongue. To speak of radio as ‘the voice of the nation’ is to forget that society has many voices in a network of harmonies and a leavening of discord.

However, we are concerned at this time with the aesthetic of the genre rather than its social role.  We must ask therefore how it differs from other genres. Why is it problematic to regard broadcast drama as theatre? In terms of practice, the answer is simple. For it is a matter of observation that radio drama tends not to transfer successfully to the stage. Visual presentation may seem to add a missing dimension. But in doing so it deprives the work of its particular qualities. Imaginative responses are diminished. Watching what happens distracts the mind from the rich textures of an aural reception.

The intimacy of radio (the audience of one or of very few) contrasts with the collective experience of theatre. A stage performance requires an audience with audible responses, the laughter, the hush, the tension, the applause. Radio is a conversation in a solitary space. Laughter in an empty room need not be a sign of isolation, but of sharing with others, unknown and nameless yet there in the curious metaphysic of words that speak across space and time. Hearing what happens feeds the mind’s eye.

It is important to remember the context of radio’s reception. Radio is often an accompaniment to other activities, perhaps traveling, or working, or doing domestic chores. It has to compete for attention. This has its aesthetic response in the nature of radio literature which may not necessarily be a linear experience like conventional drama or fiction. Its patterns of listening experience may resemble the syncopations of jazz or the dislocated imagery of dreams.

In the midst of life’s routines something heard on the air catches our attention. We find ourselves concentrating if only for a moment. The experience is of an absorption that requires more than one listening. Like poetry on the page, it may need to be received on another hearing. This makes demands on the audience. It is the responsible option. Spoon feeding the audience with patronising assurances does nothing to raise the level.

Robert Graves (in The Poet and his (sic) Public) shared Orwell’s concern about poetry on the air. It was Graves’s observation that the poetry broadcast tended to be not literature but entertainment. Broadcasting light and trivial work is the easy option. Too much should not be asked of a listener, although something ought to be asked. It is a two-way process of communication,

From the beginning there were large ambitions for radio literature. The Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck was a primary advocate of a new genre. American radio, uniting a continent (and, by example, the world) was imbibed with the social optimism of the New Deal. There were equivalent experiments in Great Britain at this time. (The name of D.G. Bridson should not be forgotten.) Commitment to the new cultural form could be found in a cross fertilization of drama, poetry, fiction and essay produced significant works which, some obvious examples apart, tend to be overlooked.

Bridson, significantly, named his work as poems. Ewan McColl wrote ‘radio ballads’. A playwright (for Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop), and a songwriter, McColl exemplifies the hybrid nature of the genre. There were ambitious projects, never fully realized, by Orson Welles and Charles Laughton to produce work across a range of media – radio, stage and film. The implication was that a script could transcend the conventional boundaries.

Convention, with its curse of banality, remained the stumbling block. The career of Tom Stoppard typifies the problem. With experience of stage and television drama, Stoppard responded to the ‘Swinging Sixties’ with some exquisite vignettes for radio. His genius was to understand perfectly whatever medium he worked in. He might have written more for sound in a less restrictive climate. Today we find that digital technologies have broadened creative access.  The writer has the liberty now to ascend the staircase with ease, if one has the talent. Writing, of course, is never easy, however it may seem to the casual eye, the careless ear.

More than a century has passed since the first steps onto unknown territory. The problem of a popular cultural context have not diminished. Responsible cultural forms are challenged. Literature’s intensity of language contrasts with populism’s simplicities. Expression and style contrast with journalism’s means of direct communication. That there can be a radio literature at all is testament not to any willed intention within the media, but to literature’s urgent voice. The conversation began before the first word was written. Technology has extended the reach of sound in time and space. The need is to strengthen the idea of radio as a writer’s medium, and for it to be more than a phrase but a reality heard clearly amid the cacophony.