Past Tense

Josie Long presents audio adventures and short documentaries about what’s gone before. A daughter’s decades-long search for her father who went missing as a political prisoner in South Africa, a poem by the German-American poet Lisel Mueller listing the parts that make up our memories, and the writer and comedian Heidi O’Loughlin untangles the stories woven into and around her Polynesian identity.

Nombulelo Booi Featuring Nombulelo Booi and Madeleine Fullard, with translation by Thenjiwe Kona. Produced by Catherine Boulle and Bongani Kona This piece is part of a larger, ongoing documentary project by Catherine and Bongani titled Time, Paper, Bone about the work of the Missing Persons Task Team, and the exhumation of James Booi’s remains. The project won the 2021 Whickers Radio and Audio Funding Award.

Necessities Written by Lisel Mueller Read by Lisel Mueller and Studs Terkel and from a conversation originally broadcast in January 1987. Courtesy of the Studs Terkel Radio Archive

From the South Pacific Written and read by Heidi O’Loughlin

Curatorial team: Alia Cassam and Eleanor McDowall Producer: Andrea Rangecroft Executive Producer: Axel Kacoutié A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4