Episodes
-
SE01E44 | Things Poets Say E01 : Poem
So, how is it pronounced? Poe-im, poe-um, poy-em, po-Em, or pome? Should you mispronounce it, will you be rewarded with abject humiliation in a room full of poets, wannabe poets, and practical people? And, more importantly, does it matter at all? Episode 01 of Things Poets Say, a brand new series...
-
SE01E43 | This Be The Verse | Philip Larkin
Mum and dad are in the dock in this poem by Philip Larkin. The spotlight on them is harsh—unforgiving even; so the question is: do they merit that? This episode reads between the verses—and takes several pages from Larkin’s life—to arrive at an answer. Warning: This episode touches upon events…
more -
SE01E42 | You Said, I Agreed | Anita Nair
Two lovers. Facts. And what seems to be an agreeable conversation. Anita Nair employs these elements across six verses that appear to tell an ordinary tale. This episode wonders about that very appearance and tries to look between its lines. (00:00) The Poem (00:48) The Specifics (01:15)...
-
SE01E41 | Success is Counted Sweetest | Emily Dickinson
High-octane superlative adjectives and people who have “made it” are the usual suspects employed to define success. Can you ignore them all though and yet get to know success face to face? This episode inspects an Emily-Dickinson poem (on success of course!) to pry open the answer to that…
more -
SE01E40 | The Poet's Grave | Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
A dead poet. The other the first to write English poems in India. The ocean. Seamews. The shore. The usual opera of nature. And a 19th-century poem. This episode unearths the elements of The Poet’s Grave and inspects its lines to find out the state of their semantics in the year 2025. (00:00) The...
-
SE01E39 | DIY02: About The Allegation in Episode 38
In Episode 38, I said I wasn't sure whether Auden did write 'Give Me a Doctor'. Well, I cannot say that anymore. This episode tells you why. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/4f6wnqb
-
SE01E38 | DIY02: Give Me a Doctor | W. H. Auden
A doctor, a patient, and a poem conspire to make you laugh. And this episode offers you questions to deconstruct them all—the alleged laugh including. (00:00) Before You Begin (00:57) An Allegation (02:25) The Poem Itself (02:56) What Sort of a Doctor? (04:42) Who Talks Like That? (05:33) A...
-
SE01E37 | #workshop | The Object of Your (Dis)Affection | An Afterthought
Does it make sense for the human in you to employ AI to complete this workshop? Think about it; write down your reasons; and then listen in. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/3YheZdr
-
SE01E36 | #workshop | The Object of Your (Dis)Affection | 5: Shape, Size, Rhyme, and Verse
Part 5 might antagonize you into rethinking the shape and size of your rhyme and verse. Proceed with caution. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/4gW5wzd Background Score: Glass of Wine | Monument_Music (Pixabay.com)
-
SE01E35 | #workshop | The Object of Your (Dis)Affection | 4: The Chopping Table
Part 4 brings out the knives and the sewing kit: You’ll rip—and quilt lexical patches—into your writing to bring your verses alive. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/3YcWsik Background Score: Glass of Wine | Monument_Music (Pixabay.com)
-
SE01E34 | #workshop | The Object of Your (Dis)Affection | 3: Marination
Part 3 asks you to let your words stew for a while. Come back to it later, it says; and it also tells you why. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/3NeygFU Background Score: Glass of Wine | Monument_Music (Pixabay.com)
-
SE01E33 | #workshop | The Object of Your (Dis)Affection | 2: In Conversation With Your Object
Part 2 invites you into a conversation—be it chatty or usually awkward—with the object under your scrutiny. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/47WkjWG Background Score: Glass of Wine | Monument_Music (Pixabay.com) Sound Effects: Pixabay.com
-
SE01E32 | #workshop | The Object of Your (Dis)Affection | 1: Finding The Object
Part 1 of this poetry workshop works with you to find an object—and thus, an objective—for your verses. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/3zPfFgI Background Score: Glass of Wine | Monument_Music (Pixabay.com) Sound Effects: Pixabay.com
-
SE01E31 | #filmswithpoems | In Her Shoes
In Her Shoes stars Cameron Diaz, Shirley MacLaine, Toni Collette, and, of course, Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art. And yes, it led to Episode 30 of this podcast. So, is the film worth your time at all? Find out in this very first edition of #filmswithpoems on I Could Think of Verse. (00:00)…
more -
SE01E30 | One Art | Elizabeth Bishop
Door keys, places, names, and some badly spent hours peer over Elizabeth Bishop’s shoulder as she writes this villanelle about losing them all. This episode investigates why Bishop wrote them all—and much more—into the poem. (00:00) We are Family (00:39) Doordarshan (1:33) Sex, Church, and Film...
-
SE01E29 | On Being Brought from Africa to America | Phillis Wheatley
Christianity. Slavery. The first African American woman poet. And her poem that knits them all into its pulsating daring exploding nucleus. This episode brings out many a lens to examine the patterns the poem creates as its maker, Phillis Wheatley, crosses land and sea from Africa to America....
-
SE01E28 | Résumé | Dorothy Parker
Work experience seems to have been studiously kept out of this biographical summary of a career. So, this episode sifts through this Résumé to find out whether its writer hid any of that between its lines. Warning: This episode contains language that may cause trauma and discomfort. Listener...
-
SE01E27 | Dishes | Megha Harish
A mundane diary entry. A deciding moment at the kitchen sink. Or a reverie on a bothersome afternoon. We hold Megha Harish’s Dishes to the light in this episode to see whether all of that and more cascades into the visuals she crafts in the story she tells. (00:00) The Poem (00:55) What Do I See?...
-
SE01E26 | DIY01: This is My Letter to The World | Emily Dickinson
Why that letter? What world? What be the message? and other such questions are what you’re going to find answers to—quite literally—on your own. Here’s the transcript: https://bit.ly/47w5dFp You’ll need it in your investigation. And here’re the sections and timestamps at which they begin: (00:00)...
-
SE01E25 | In You The Earth | Pablo Neruda
A chance conversation, a confession, and the very controversial Nobel laureate—all sit alongside one another to make sense of this poem. This six-part episode grabs them all by the collar and asks some questions in the wake of what tumbles out. (00:00) The Poem (01:16) The Analysis (10:24) The...
-
SE01E24 | The Unknown Citizen | W.H. Auden
A laundry list of observations, a man startlingly similar to an automated assembly line, and the question of happiness and freedom. This episode inspects these and the threads that bind them into the themes of W.H. Auden's The Unknown Citizen. Instagram: @icoulthinkofverse Transcript:...
-
SE01E23: Scandal | Lola Ridge | 3
A window in a village, Mars (of all things!), the Moon (not unsurprisingly), winds, canyons, Neptune and a skyscraper find themselves strung into a poem of 12 lines. Is that a scandal? Or what they’ve been asked by Lola Ridge to portray? This episode and the preceding two (SE01E21 and SE01E22)…
more -
SE01E22 | Scandal | Lola Ridge | 2
A window in a village, Mars (of all things!), the Moon (not unsurprisingly), winds, canyons, Neptune and a skyscraper find themselves strung into a poem of 12 lines. Is that a scandal? Or what they’ve been asked by Lola Ridge to portray? This episode, the one prior to it (SE01E21), and the...
-
SE01E21 | Scandal | Lola Ridge | 1
A window in a village, Mars (of all things!), the Moon (not unsurprisingly), winds, canyons, Neptune and a skyscraper find themselves strung into a poem of 12 lines. Is that a scandal? Or what they’ve been asked by Lola Ridge to portray? This episode and the subsequent two (SE01E22 and SE01E23)…
more -
SE01E20 | The Father Archetype | Hoshang Merchant
The Christ, St. Peter, and the dogmatic typical are the cast of characters in Hoshang Merchant’s The Father Archetype. On display are Peter’s fate and Jesus, the Son of God; and ideally that’s what you’d expect the poem to concern itself with. But remember, we have Merchant welding its verses...
-
SE01E19 | Okee Pokee Crack Me Crown | Anonymous
A King. His island. His 18th wife. Flying dragons. Stars. And ships with sails. All of them star in this poem about what the said king wore to a party. Pretty innocent a premise, really—harmless even. Or is it? Find out as Episode 19 scrutinises the verses of this poem in minute detail.…
more -
SE01E18 | The Shortest Poem in The World | Aram Saroyan
Depending on the way you look at it, this poem barely has any connection to any phoneme whatsoever; it occupies approximately three hundredth of the space this blurb does; and yet it did, and continues to, stir up quite a whirlpool of interpretation. This episode dives into that very…
more -
SE01E17 | Bookmark | Anil Pradhan Shrestha
On a night like any other, a reader notices crumbling hints of a bookmark on Page 89. As they crumble and falter away from the reader’s eyes, they lure him into inspecting marks he has scratched into his own life. Did those marks hurt? Were they unforgiving? Was there a crime of passion involved?...
-
SE01E16 | Eponymous | Amani Saeed
A-M-A-N-I. Amani. All of five letters intertwined with three lilting syllables that knit a treasure trove of meanings in languages across continents. Ideally, such a name would have won over everyone’s tongue in a heartbeat. But that wasn’t to be. Perhaps that muscle in people’s mouths found it...
-
SE01E15 | The Japanese | Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash let loose his wit and satire in this poem to sketch a rather unholy picture of the people from The Land of the Rising Sun. Episode 15 goes back in time to 1938 to find out why. Instagram: icouldthinkofverse Transcript: https://bit.ly/3uKBBXK Background Score (Pixabay.com): Asian...
-
SE01E14 | In The Bazaars of Hyderabad | Sarojini Naidu
Usually, an Indian bazaar always dresses up—no matter what be the occasion. Its dress code involves reams of cacophony, streams of colour, and a sea of some of the most exquisite items to bargain for. The consequent diversity in sight and sound allows for many an interpretation of its ambience…
more -
SE01E13 | Mad Daughter and Big-Bang | Araki Yasusada
Araki Yasusada survived the 1945 Hiroshima bombings, wrote poems about it, and became a poetry-of-witness sensation in the 1990s. His Mad Daughter and Big-Bang keeps the opulence of melodrama miles away while it sketches his anguish at the loss of his daughter in those bombings. The poem is...
-
SE01E12 | lighght | Aram Saroyan
It consists of seven letters, looks like a misspelling, and hit the headlines sometime around 1969 for being very very ‘expensive’. So is Aram Saroyan’s lighght a poem at all? Or is it some whimsy that, on a whim, picked up a cheque of $750 from the USA’s National Endowment for the Arts? Episode…
more -
SE01E11 | Trees | Joyce Kilmer
There’s a bad poetry contest ‘dedicated’ to its poet. It has been parodied often enough—and not by way of flattery; and for all practical purposes, it has been dismissed as being archaic and sentimental enough to be considered meh poetry. Even so, does Trees, written by Joyce Kilmer, have…
more -
SE01E10 | Mirror | Sylvia Plath
The mirror. That silver pool in which you look at your self over and over. You consult it when you want the truth that the world shies away from telling you. It seems to be adequately honest—most of the time; and yet, I’m sure you may have wondered whether the mirror, like the human being you…
more -
SE01E09 | Dubious | Vikram Seth
Four verses. Jack and Jill from your nursery days. And an introspection. Vikram Seth dices and chops all of those with more than a sliver of humour and his tongue perhaps somewhere firmly in cheek and serves up Dubious. Episode 9 takes a closer look at Dubious and tries to dissect what flavour...
-
SE01E08 | l(a | E. E. Cummings
l(a. Yes that’s the title of the poem. The open bracket does form part of it. And no, it’s not one of the acronyms or initialisms bandied about these days, and I’m talking about the days such as they are in the year 2023. What it is is the first line of a poem: a poem spread across nine lines…
more -
SE01E07 | Irani Restaurant Instructions | Nissim Ezekiel
Yes, it’s quite a list of instructions. They are all quirky and allow you —nay, invite you—to think them ridiculous. Perhaps they had a purpose way way back in time— when Irani cafes had just begun to beat with the pulse of the city of Bombay. These days, that beat within the walls of these cafes...
-
SE01E06 | The Professor | Nissim Ezekiel
The first few lines of Nissim Ezekiel's 'The Professor' sketch a rather harmless chance meeting that a student might have to endure and a professor, orchestrate. Which has you expect nothing but mundanity from the poem. But as its resulting monologue takes its chances with its participants, it...
-
SE01E05 | The Neglected Wife | Joseph Furtado
It’s pre-independence India and Bombay is one of the reasons why a woman in Goa is neglected. The lack of sex is another. And of course, love seems to be in perennial short supply. Joseph Furtado, a poet from Pilerne, Goa, lets the woman talk in his poem and doesn’t strangle her narrative with…
more -
SE01E04 | Beginning My Studies | Walt Whitman
Insects, animals, the senses, and of course, love. All of those dress up 'Beginning My Studies' as a poem about one's love for nature. But can such a poem—that sallied forth from Walt Whitman into his rather autobiographical ‘Leaves of Grass’—be content to remain just a poem about nature alone?...
-
SE01E03 | Conversation | Elizabeth Bishop
It’s all of two stanzas and yet manages to accommodate the eccentricities of a conversation well within itself. Small wonder then that Elizabeth Bishop calls the poem just that: ‘Conversation’. Episode 2 is all about that very ‘Conversation’. P.S.: It’s no small wonder Bishop wrote it though: the...
-
SE01E02 | In a Station of The Metro | Ezra Pound
What do you get when a man steps onto a subway station and is captivated by the faces he sees adrift in the milling swarming crowd? Well, you get ‘In a Station of a Metro’—with a little help from Haiku coupled with the brilliant ethereal imagination of the very very controversial Ezra Pound....
-
SE01E01 | Introduction
Oh it's just a press conference of an introduction. The usual questions asked and the usual answers given, with a slight bit of temper and patience lost in between! :-D Enjoy! Transcript: https://bit.ly/3UUmoOn
About this show
A podcast about poems in all shapes and sizes.Cover Design: Koni Barry
Hosted by
Garfield Dsouza
Categories