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PODCAST

The Poetry Voice

Readings of poems from Old English to the present.

arts literature

All Episodes

00:00:45

Robert Burns' 'A red red Rose'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/02/13

Robert Burns (1759-1796) One of the glories of English poetry, or poetry in English, is the short lyric. There are thousands of them, and some of them, like this one, are excellent. A memorable statement of a commonplace idea which is not undermined by the knowledge that the poet probably got bored of the original addressee and tried the poem out on someone else. When Richard Tottel printed the first anthology of poetry in English, in 1557, he was almost apologetic about publishing short poems

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00:02:40

John Betjeman's 'A Subaltern's love Song'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/02/11

Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) One of the most popular English language poets of the twentieth century. His collected poems sold over two million copies. One of the nastier assumptions about modern poetry is that it’s not possible to be popular and good. Great poets have five readers and an academic following. Popular poets have either no talent or have prostituted themselves to find an audience. As an assumption it’s both nasty and dangerous. Betjeman was popular and good. Some of his poems,

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00:02;21

George Gascoigne's 'Gascoigne's Lullabie'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/02/06

George Gascoigne (1535-1578) I know very little about George Gascoigne, and looking him up on line hasn’t added much to that. But I do like this poem for its combination of weary resignation and sly humour. And poems like this are the reason why good anthologies are so valuable. I found this one in Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, edited by John Leonard. A lot can be said against anthologies, but a good one, like Seven Centuries, is a great place to start if you’re curious about poetry

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00:00:54

Robert Graves' 'The Persian Version'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/02/04

Robert Graves (1895-1985) The ‘Greek Version’, which is the ‘historical version’ is that in 490 BCE, the citizens of Athens and some allies defeated a numerically superior Persian army at Marathon. In doing so they stopped the first Persian attempt to conquer Greece. Marathon became a symbol of small nations fighting for freedom against overwhelming odds. Graves was having fun imagining the Persian Version of events. It may not be funny in a world where armies can advance towards the rear,

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00:01:06

Liam Guilar's 'My Grandmother's story'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/30

Liam Guilar The most frightening ghost stories I’ve encountered were told around the table by my English Grandmother and my Irish Father. There was no attempt to ‘be frightening. They both believed in the truth of the stories they were telling. This one scared me most because it didn’t finish. It seemed to be all detail and no story. Years later, when I remembered to ask her what was under the floorboards, the answer was long and involved and didn’t seem to belong to this story. The poem is

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00:02:22

Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/28

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) Student: Sir! Is he trying to get her clothes off….? Me:…. Student: It’s not gonna work is it? If it’s not surprising that so many English poems seem to have a speaker, usually male, addressing someone, usually female, and trying to get them to undress, what is remarkable is how many of those speakers are doomed to failure if the poem is all they’ve got. And this is one of the most famous examples. Was any woman ever seduced by being told; ‘You’ll be dead soon, in the

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00:01:19

Dylan Thomas' 'Do not go gentle into that good night'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/23

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Form became a fetish in some kingdoms of poetry world in the later twentieth century. Creative writing students practised Sestinas and Villanelles, and some of them produced technically proficient examples. Most of them were immediately forgettable, and if you enjoy trivial pursuits a good question is 'Name three great villanelles written in the twentieth century'. What the festishists ignored, forgot or didn’t know what that form is never the whole story. You can teach an

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00:05:42

Robert Service's 'The Cremation of Sam McGee'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/21

Robert Service (1874-1958) You could turn your nose up at Robert Service and his poems. He called them verse, poetry was something other people wrote. He pads his lines, he isn’t afraid to use a cliche when it fits, and the rhythm often seems to be only on nodding terms with the sense. He’s old fashioned. Out of date. etc etc. And this poem is haunted by the ghost of a much greater one. But turning your nose up at Service is just silly. His poems were written to be recited, and reading them

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00:00:57

Louis MacNeice's 'The Introduction'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/15

Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) One of the underrated poets of the twentieth century. A fine critic, an entertaining writer of prose and a fine poet, (unfairly I think) overshadowed in the history books by his friend W.H. Auden. Perhaps his reputation also suffers because although Irish, he lived most of his life in England. So he misses out on the club value of ‘Irish Poet’ while remaining outside the charmed circle of “English Poets’. This is not one of the poems I’d offer as proof of his

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00:01:27

Basil Bunting's 'What the Chairman Told Tom'.

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/14

Basil Bunting (1900-1985) Nasty little words, nasty long words, it's unhealthy. I want to wash when I meet a poet. They're Reds, addicts, all delinquents. What you write is rot. You can enjoy this poem as a joke, or as a caricature of a very common attitude towards poetry. Writing is not work in the way being a bus conductor is work, and if the ten year old son can do it and rhyme, and the school teacher thinks that the poetry isn’t good, and after all, school teachers know about this stuff,

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00:02:57

Andy Brown's 'Casket' from part V 'The High Barrow'

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/08

Andy Brown This is taken from Brown’s sequence ‘Casket’ (Shearman 2019). The casket in question is the Franks Casket, an 8th century Whale bone box currently in the British Museum. What pictures of the Box don't do is show how small the thing is, or how intricate the carving. The Anglo-Saxons were blessed with superb craftsmen. If you get the chance, go see the box in the British Museum, or some of the finds from the ‘Staffordshire Hoard’ and while you’re standing there remind yourself: no

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00:01:29

John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book 12, Adam and...

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/06

John Milton (1608-1674) This is the third of three readings from ‘Paradise Lost’. This is from Book Twelve, line 624 ff. It’s the end of the poem. Although Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise, they turn towards their future and the world is, literally, ‘all before them’. Although this is their punishment, it doesn’t sound like it. True they are banned from Paradise, but the poem escapes the theology and it sounds more like the start of a magnificent shred adventure, or the early days of a

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00:04:23

John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book Nine, Satan...

The Poetry Voice ·

2020/01/02

John Milton (1608-1674) This is the second of three readings from ‘Paradise Lost’. This is from Book Nine, line 421 ff Satan has escaped from Hell and found Adam and Eve. In this extract he finds Eve alone in the Garden. The extract includes one of my favourite moments in English Poetry (I have a lot of favourite moments) when Satan is made ‘Stupidly good’ by the sight of Eve. It also contains some fine examples of the unusual way in which Milton dealt with English Syntax. Here’s one

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00:01:24

John Milton's 'Paradise Lost' from Book One

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/31

John Milton (1608-1674) This is the first of three readings from ‘Paradise Lost’. This is from Book One, lines 242-270 The story begins with the fallen angels in Hell. In this brief excerpt Satan has emerged from the lake of fire into which he was cast down. He steps on to dry land, and surveying hell, his prison and the proof of his defeat, rebrands it as his kingdom. There are many ways in which you could write a history of English poetry. You could study left handed poets throughout history,

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00:02:41

T.S. Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi'

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/25

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) A poem in three movements. In the first, Eliot catches the grumbling voice of a man unaccustomed to hard travelling, remembering the uncomfortable details of a preposterous journey. In the second, the Magi find what they thought they were looking for ‘and it was (you may say) satisfactory’. And in the third the speaker acknowledges the ambiguity of that experience, which marked the end of ‘the old dispensation’ and left him stranded between a death and a birth. From

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00:01:24

Christina Rossetti's 'A Christmas Carol'

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/24

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) An obvious choice for the season. Perhaps better known as the Carol, ‘In the Bleak Mid Winter’. It’s interesting attempting to read this while trying to ignore the familiar cadence of the sung version. This is taken from the Penguin Classics ‘Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems’.

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00:01:42

Peeping Tom Speaks from 'Lady Godiva and Me'

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/19

‘Lady Godiva and Me’ is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry. My idea was that anyone who stood on a street corner in the city could imagine the swirling voices of all the people who had lived there since the city was first founded. In the first section, ‘History to Legend’, the voices of Leofric, Godgifu/Godiva and Peeping Tom can be heard. Here’s Peeping Tom, unapologetic, speaking for himself. You can read more samples on www.liamguilar.com A revised second

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00:05.54

from 'Lady Godiva and me' The Modern City

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/19

‘Lady Godiva and Me’ is a book length sequence of poems set in the city of Coventry. The idea was that anyone who stood on a street corner in the city, could imagine the swirling voices of all the people who had lived there since the city was first founded. The second part of the sequence, called ‘The Modern City’ suggests the voices of the migrant communities that made the city after the second world war. This is a small sample from that section. You can read more samples on

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00:01:24

W.B.Yeats' 'The Second Coming'

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/17

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) ‘The best lack all conviction’: It’s not always true, but there are times, like the present, when it does seem accurate. And though Yeats wrote this after the First World War, the poem seems to rediscover its own topicality as each generation faces the baffling reality of its own political misery. I wrote on a previous podcast that Yeats is the unavoidable English language poet. He was so very good at what he did. He wrote better lines, better images, better

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00:01:19

Thom Gunn's 'Expression'

The Poetry Voice ·

2019/12/12

Thom Gunn (1929-2004) ‘I have been reading my contemporaries’ This is the first year since I started school when I have not been obliged to read anything. So I have been catching up on what is considered admirable in Contemporary poetry. I have read award winning books, and books by famous poets, and that odd thing, the popular poetry book. And while some of it is excellent, this poem has been running through my head.

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