‘I listen with endless delight to the dripping tap in the bath’

Josephine Dickinson is an English poet and musician who has lived most of her life with impaired hearing, or none at all.

A cochlear implant has restored her ability to enjoy sounds, and music. She writes movingly about the transformation here.

I entered a new world where every tap, squeak, clang, whisper and consonant exploded and sizzled inside my head. The air was filled with a flutter of whistles and flutes in the highest register of ambient noise: my hair rustling, clothes brushing against each other, door hinges squeaking. Every sound had a limitless resonance. Pattering feet set off tinklings that endured. My dog’s barks set off sympathetic changs and chungs in the radiators through the house.