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PODCAST

The Poetry Voice

Readings of poems from Old English to the present.

arts literature

All Episodes

00:01:22

Taliesin's 'Marwnat Owein'. The lament for Owain son...

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/04/06

Taliesin (6th Century) There are at least two Taliesin’s. There was an Historical bard who composed poetry in the courts of ‘Welsh Princes’ in the Sixth Century, a contemporary of Aneirin. There was also a character from a folk tale, who gained knowledge and inspiration from a cauldron he was stirring, and after many transformations was born again as a miraculous child who could speak as soon as he was born and went on to be a magician and prophet as well as a poet. The Book of Taliesin is one

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00:00:37

Alun Lewis' 'The Swan's way'

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/03/10

Alun Lewis (1915-1944) Considered by some to be one of the few great poets to serve and write during the second world war. This is his take on the myth of Leda and the Swan. Zeus turns himself into a swan to rape leda, and Helen of Troy is born. It’s been a subject in art since Classical times. Yeats wrote a fine poem on the same subject. But in Lewis’ version the God disguised as Swan is stricken by an understanding of what he’s done. Such remorse rarely figures in either the pictures or the

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00:01:48

Liam Guilar's 'These heroics One and Two'.

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/02/25

Two poems, written some years apart. The modern admiration for the action hero seems like a childish escape into fantasy, until you realise the implications. Real heroism, the courage to keep going on a daily basis where there is no simple victory, no cheering crowd, no prize, goes unnoticed. These heroics number one is takes from I’ll Howl before you bury me. These heroics number two from Rough spun to Close Weave. Both are still available from www.liamguilar.com (A note on pronunciation

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00:00:01:19

Dylan Thomas' 'The Force that though the green fuse...

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/02/19

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) I first encountered Thomas’s writing when I was in high school. naturally, it had nothing to do with school, I found the recording of Under Milkwood in the city record library. Richard Burton reading First Voice ! I was captivated by the astonishing sound scape, and the humour of the script. From there I went to the short stories in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Dog, an obsession it took a decade to escape. The poems I was never sure about. There were some that were

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00:01:41

Susan Watson's 'Why she began to study the works of...

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/02/09

Susan Watson The Time of the Angels is a sequence of poems in which a young woman reads and re-reads Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur during the winter and spring of 1979. She is researching and writing an undergraduate dissertation, but her encounter with Malory is also a highly personal one; she perceives the centrality of ‘chances, choices, prophecies, destinies, past and future time’ and responds to an atmosphere of ‘loss soaking backwards through the pages like a tide receding’. And there

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00:00:54

William Blake's 'London'.

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/02/01

William Blake (1757-1827) For some, Blake is the great visionary poet of the 18/19th century. He had to wait a long time until his reputation and position amongst some critics was established. He can still seem like a peripheral character who became lost in his own private mythology. There’s an odd sense generated in some corners of poetry world that you have to like or admire certain poets. As much as I admire this particular poem, and it is undeniably a great poem and a fine work of social

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00:01:29

Liam Guilar's 'Byron In Venice: The poet in Exile.'

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/01/18

Byron in Venice (The poet in exile) The debris of a city in decline slops at the crumbling steps, as the sun sets over palaces even dusk can’t dignify. The clock strikes, he puts down the page and calls for servants. Suddenly cannot remember if he is to meet the opera singer or the serving maid. No matter how elaborate the choreography, his hands run free, his mind completes the rhyme. Afterwards, duty done, excuses made, he’ll coax these stanzas to their climax and scrawl defiance on the

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00:01:02

Miroslav Holub's ''A History lesson'

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/01/13

Miroslav Holub, (1923 –1998) Holub lived in Prague, and worked as an immunologist. He wrote a paper called ‘The Immunology of Nude Mice’. His obituary appeared in the New York Times. He also wrote wonderful poems. ‘Napoleon’ is also on the Poetry Voice, and as with that poem, versions of history collide, and the wit and the critical point will make themselves apparent if you let them. This translation is taken from Heaney and Hughes’ ‘The Rattle Bag’ and the translation is by George

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00:00:26

Randall Jarrell's 'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner'.

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/01/11

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) It’s one of the superficial oddities of English poetry that the First World War produced an enormous amount of poetry, some of which has entered the Canon, while the Second didn’t. It’s only a superficial oddity,; culture and education had changed dramatically. However, this short poem, by the American poet and critic, Randall Jarrell, is one of the most memorable poems written in the twentieth century about war. Part of the horror of the poem lies in the unemotional

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00:01:29

Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Love's affliction'. (Cystudd Cariad)

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/01/06

You can hear this poem read in its original Welsh at the superb University of Swansea site dedicated to Dafydd and his work.Unfortunately it won’t let me link directly to the poem:Click on this link…which will open a new window.http://www.dafyddapgwilym.net/eng/3win.phpChoose poem 82 from the drop down menu in the left hand corner, then click the ‘audio’ link at the bottom of the page.

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00:00:42

R.S. Thomas' 'Mice'

The Poetry Voice ·

2022/01/04

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00:00:55

Luis Quintais' 'Amphitheatre' (trans Lesley Saunders)

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/12/18

Luis Quintais (1968-) You can read about Luis Quintais, a poet writing in Portuguese as well as this translation and four other others by clicking on the link below. It will open in a new page.. https://brazen-head.org/2020/12/15/poems-by-luis-quintais-translated-from-the-portuguese-by-lesley-saunders/ This is a good example of what happens when one fine poet translates another. We live in a great age of translation. Which means we have access to poetry in languages you’ve probably never

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00:01.23

Liam Guilar's 'After the Funerals'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/12/05

This poem is taken from 'Rough Spun to Close Weave'. A listener asked for the text of the poem as well. After the Funerals one by one they take their leave; parting without formal courtesies startled by the shock, again, as one by one they take their leave. Affection, understanding, even knowing what there was to value, come too late: gifts delivered past their use by dates. 2 The plane strains upwards in the night, banks, and there, below the city that we thought we knew; drab

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00:01:24

Hafez 'What memories' (trans Dick Davis)

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/11/27

Hafez, 1315 (?) -1398/90) We live in a great age of translation, and there's no excuse for not exploring poetries other than English. Hafez is one of the world’s great poets, in one of the history’s great literatures, and Dick Davis is one of the great translators. Ironically i first came across both of them in an essay Davis wrote called ‘On not Translating Hafez’. This poem is taken from Davis’ ‘Faces of Love: Hafez and the poets of Shiraz’ Mage Publishers 2012/2019

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00:04:06

from Prudentius' 'Hamartigenia'. On Free Will.

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/11/19

‘Prudentius’, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens. (348-405?) Originally written in Latin, this poem was part of a contemporary theological argument. This sounds dour, but it rocks along in Martha M. Malamud’s translation. The section I’ve read here is about free will. Prudentius argues that when God gave man power over the beasts, he also gave him power over himself. The first five or so lines I’ve read here present the point of view that Prudentius is arguing against. Therefore good and evil are

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00:00:36

Jeremy Hooker's 'Novelty'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/11/12

Jeremy Hooker (born 1941) I don't often read two consecutive poems from the same poet, but I wanted to hear this one. It's taken from Hooker's 'Selected Poems (1965-2018)' published 2020 by Shearsman books

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00:01:36

Jeremy Hooker's 'Gull on a Post'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/11/05

Jeremy Hooker (Born 1941) Shearsman published Hooker’s Selected poems (1965-2018) in 2020. It’s an impressive body of work, through provoking, moving, and very enjoyable to read. I like the way this poem uses a single, familiar (If you live near the coast) image to explore a complex idea, and resists the temptation to shut down the exploration with a neat conclusion. I also like the way the poem never loses sight of the physical world. The gull and the post are always a gull and a post,

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00:01:37

Lewis Carroll's 'You are Old Father William'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/28

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) Like many things in Alice in Wonderland, this was a parody, but the target has long been consigned to the footnotes. It is what it is: Carroll’s control of rhyme and rhythm seems effortless. It’s certainly enviable. And the poem is memorably funny. I’m probably not the only one to remember hearing ‘I have answered three questions and that is enough’ or ‘be off and don’t give yourself airs’ quoted by an exasperated adult.

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00:01:32

William Wordsworth's 'The world is too much with us'....

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/23

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ‘Getting and spending we lay waste our powers’. Says it all really. This reading was a request. Which reminds me to point out that if you have a poem you’d like to hear read on the Podcast you can send your request via the contact form on www.liamguilar.com or to my author page on facebook. Some poems don’t work well read aloud, and some just don’t work when I read them. I can’t promise there will be no parrots, dogs or traffic in the background, but i’ll see

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00:01:01

Meirion Jordan's 'Arawn Lord of Annwn'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/22

Meirion Jordan (Born 1985) This is the second of two readings of poems based on the Welsh prose Mabinogion. This is taken from Meirion Jordan’s ‘Regeneration/Redbook’. While Mathew Francis retells the stories, (see previous Podcast) Jordan uses his poems to respond to them. Based on the stories, but treating them aslant, his poems raise the question of whether a poem like this works if you don’t know the story. Or even if they do work when you do know the background. In the Mabinogion Arawn

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105 results

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