PODCAST

The Poetry Voice

Liam Guilar

Readings of poems from Old English to the present.

arts literature

All Episodes

00:03:20

from Mathew Francis' 'The Mabinogi' Rhiannon's arrival

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/19

This extract is taken from ‘The Mabinogi’, (Faber 2017), Francis’ retelling of the first four stories in the collection of eleven Medieval Welsh prose stories printed in English as The Mabinogion. The Mabinogi is the name given to the first four stories. In this extract from the first story, Pwyll, who is prince of Dyfed, has been told that if he sits on Gorsedd Arberth, a hill overlooking his court, one of two things will happen: wounds or blows, or he will see a wonder. Because he is with an

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00:03:30

Dick Davis' 'A Translator's Nightmare'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/14

Dick Davis (Born 1945) Widely regarded as the leading English translator of Persian Poetry, Davis is also a fine poet, as his Collected poems, ‘Love in Another Language’, demonstrates. In this poem his fluency with rhyming couplets allows the humour of the nightmare to swing. And the humour doesn’t hide the serious point that’s being made, that no matter how good the translator, there must be times when he or she wonders what would happen if they met up with their source in the hereafter. And

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00:00:49

Liam Guilar's 'Just once'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/08

‘Coke’ in this sense, is fuel for a fire. Thought cleaner than coal, it was much harder to light. This poem is taken from Rough Spun to Close Weave which is still available from online booksellers or direct from the shop on WWW.Liamguilar.com.

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00:00:53

John Keats' 'When I have fears that I may cease to be'.

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/06

John Keats (1795-1821) Sometimes poetry is the memorable expression of a commonplace thought. Keats, more than most, was haunted by the threat of an early death. A dedicated poet, he wanted to be ‘amongst the English poets at my death’. He died of Tuberculosis, in his mid twenties, a long way from home, coughing his lungs up in a rented room in Italy and he felt he’d failed. The epitaph he choose for himself, ‘here lies one whose name was writ in water’, sums up his disappointment. Amongst

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00:01:31

George Herbert's 'The Collar'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/10/01

George Herbert 1593-1633 Herbert was a priest, and his poetry has been described as ‘some of the most moving devotional poetry in the English Language’. But often, as in this poem, the relationship between priest and god, is strained. ‘The collar’ runs on a series of puns, some depending on spellings and usage which are not longer current, and which may not be evident in a reading. A collar was a yoke, but also a priest’s collar, a sign of service. It’s also a way of being caught, and an aural

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00:01:38

Alfred De Musset's 'On a Dead Woman' (Sur une Morte)

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/09/16

Alfred De Musset (1810-1857) The woman in question was not dead. According to the translator, Stanley Appelbaum, ‘The ‘Morte’ of the poem, the Princess Belgiojoso, was not at all dead but coquettishly indifferent to the poet’s advances.’ This is taken from “Introduction to French Poetry’ edited by Stanley Appelbaum, who claims in his introduction that the translations are ‘definitely not intended to be poetic recreations of the original works, but merely aids to the understanding of the content’

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00:04:46

The Archpoet's confession

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/09/09

The Archpoet (12th century) ‘The Archpoet’ is the name given to a writer of a handful of Latin lyrics of which this ‘Confession’ is the most famous. Almost nothing is known about his identity or the details of his life. Imagine a priest or monk, accused of a string of vices. The ‘Confession’ confronts the accusations and gleefully admits to them all. There’s a debate about whether it’s genuinely autobiographical or a rhetorical exercise, and that is unlikely to be answered. But the poem was

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00:01:58

Rudyard Kipling's 'If'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/09/02

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) There was a time poems entered the language and were recycled in daily usage. And ‘If’ is perhaps one of the best examples of such a poem. It has been voted Britain’s Most popular poem, though I suspect that day has passed. It’s full of good advice, memorably expressed. Nowhere does it suggest you need counselling or a handbook of excuses. But I can also imagine a Victorian father giving his son such a lecture, and the son walking out thinking, well, that’s that then

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00:03:20

Federico Garcia Lorca's 'Somnambule Ballad'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/08/28

Frederico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) (Translated by Stephen Spender and J.L Gill) For those outside Spain, who read no Spanish, Lorca is probably the most famous Spanish poet of the twentieth century. This is a very different poem to the ones I’ve previously read on the podcast. It helps, listening to this poem or reading it, to remember Lorca was friends with Dali and Bunuel. There is a story that when those two were making 'Un Chien Andalou', their ground breaking surrealist film, one would

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00:04:39

from Christopher Logue's 'War Music' 2. The Death of...

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/08/27

Christopher Logue (1926-2011) This is my second reading from ‘War Music’. In the first, Patroculus has begged Achilles for the loan of his armour. When Achilles reluctantly agrees, he insists that no matter how successful Patroculus is he must not chase the Trojans to their city. Apollo, the Mouse God, is present and on the Trojan’s side. After a day of staggering success, Patroculus ignores the interdiction and chases the Trojans to the walls of their city. This extract begins as he tries to

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00:06:39

from Christopher Logue's 'War Music'. 1 Patroculus...

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/08/20

Christopher Logue (1926-2011) A fine poet in his own work, Logue’s most lasting achievement should be his ‘account’ of Homer’s Iliad. He didn't called his work a translation. In 1959 he was asked to translate a section of the Iliad for a radio performance. In his memoire, ‘Prince Charming’ (p.221), he relates that when he pointed out he knew no Greek, he was told:. ‘Read translations by those who did. Follow the story. A translator must know one language well. Preferably his own.’ It is an

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00:05:05

Ovid's 'Pygmalion' trans Arthur Golding

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/08/14

Arthur Golding (1536-1605) Publius Ovidius Naso (43 Bc-17/18 AD) Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’ written in Latin in the first decade of the First Century AD, long before England was invented, is ironically one of the key texts in English poetry and Ovid one of its most influential poets. One of the reasons for the popularity of the Metamorphosis after the Middle Ages is Golding’s translation, which influenced so many who read it, including one W. Shakespeare. The story of Pygmalion lives on in Shaw’s

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00:00:58

Sappho's 'Fragment 31'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/08/11

Possibly the most famous female poet in history? Well known and highly respected in her own Greek culture. Her name is still very well known, though perhaps for the wrong reasons. Very little of her work survives, and most of it seems to be fragments. There are numerous attempts at translating this particular poem: Catullus, Campion, Bunting and others have done their best. I like this version because it respects the fragment and works as a poem. This is taken from Sappho, Poems and Fragments,

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00:01:02

Charles Hamilton Sorley's 'When you see millions of...

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/08/07

Sorely was killed by a sniper in 1915 while serving on the Western Front. This poem, written in pencil, was found amongst his belongings. The few poems he had written were collected and published in January 1916 as ‘Marlborough and other poems’. This is taken from the slightly enlarged second edition of February 1916. Had Sorely lived and continued to write, most of the poems in the book would probably have been filed away as ‘Juvenilia’. As it was, he didn’t get to revise any of them for

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00:03:49

Lewis Carroll's 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'.

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/07/30

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) ‘Light verse’ is often a dismissive term. Light verse can be clever, witty, humorous, entertaining, memorable and enjoyable but Real Poetry should be serious, profound, ‘deep’, emotional….it’s a silly argument. Some of the best poetry of the 19th century is described as ‘light verse’, and Lewis Carroll wrote some of the best examples. Almost as silly as the dismissal of light verse is the inevitable attempt to find political, religious or ideological themes that would

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00:01:13

Carol Ann Duffy's 'You'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/07/23

Carol Ann Duffy (1955-) This is the first poem in Duffy’s ‘Rapture’ (2005), which is either a book length love poem or a book length sequence of poems which chart the rise and fall of a passionate love affair. ‘Rapture’ won the T.S.Eliot Prize in 2005. For many people the relationship between love and poetry seems a simple one. But of the thousands of poems written each day, and the thousands published each year, there are very few good love poems. As an experiment, pick up a general anthology

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00:02:07

John Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/07/21

John Keats In Tennyson’s Lady of Shalotte, the metaphor is buried by the story. In La Belle Dame sans Merci, the story is the metaphor. The narrative is as straightforward as a fairy tale, though it also reads like a nightmare. There are several suggestions as to what the story ‘means’: La Belle Dame is tuberculosis, Infatuation, Fanny Brawne, male fear of the feminine. You can take your pick. What Keats thought it meant is a different matter. The poem first appeared in a long letter he wrote

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00:05:35

Thomas E. Spencer's 'How McDougall topped the score'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/07/14

Thomas E. Spencer (1845-1911) I know nothing about Spenser except he wrote this poem and I own a signed, 1906 copy of ‘How McDougall Topped the Score and other sketches and verses’. I don’t even know why I have the book. According to Wikipedia Spencer migrated to Sydney, Australia in 1875 and became a successful builder and contractor, winning government contracts for work on Goulburn gaol, the University of Sydney's physics laboratory and the sewerage system in Sydney. ‘How McDougall Topped

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00:06:54

Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/07/03

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) Another poem in which the poet has taken a story and adapted it. Tennyson was a great poet, if technique is a criteria of greatness. Try writing stanzas using the rhythm and rhyme scheme he does here and see how hard it is. He doesn’t put a foot wrong if you pronounce glow’d/trode/flow’d/rode to rhyme. There’s a sung version by Loreena Mckennit which brings out how melodious the lyric is far better than any reading can. But being a great technician is not

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00:01:11

C.P. Cavafy's 'The God Abandons Anthony'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/07/02

Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) This is the second of Cavafy’s poems on the Podcast. Like the first it plays off a classical story. In this case it takes an incident from Plutarch’s life of Anthony, and shifts from the particular historical event, when Anthony is supposed to have heard his patron God, DIonysus leaving the city, to a more universal poem about loss and defeat. How should you behave when faced with failure? The poem offers advice to an unnamed protagonist. Leonard Cohen used this

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