Episodes
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Guest poet Lauren Frederick reads two poems
Lauren Frederick reads two poems from her new collection, "I saved a set for you.' The book is available on Amazon.
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Ivor Winters' 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'
If you don't know the story, read on. ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ is a fourteenth century poem that survives in a single manuscript. The story begins in King Arthur’s court at Christmas when a huge green knight on a huge green horse rides into the court and challenges everyone to a game. He...
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Wilfrid Owen's 'The Parable of the Old man and the Young'
In the Book of Genesis, Abraham (Abram) is tempted by God, who tells him to sacrifice his only son. Obediently Abraham takes Isaac, and is prepared to kill him, but God interrupts and offers him an animal to sacrifice instead. One wonders about the conversation between father and son on the way...
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John Dressel's 'Lets Hear It For Goliath'
John Dressel (b1934) I worry about my pronunciation of people’s names, so if I have mispronounced John Dressel’s I apologise. Like Hamlet, (who appeared in the previous post) Goliath has escaped the facts of his story. Recently a news headline read; ‘Firm wins in David and Goliath legal battle’....
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Gwyn Thomas’ 'You've Lived'.
Gwyn Thomas (1936-2016) This is the first of a short run of poems in which poets use other works of literature or characters from literature to make a point or to consider an idea. Hamlet is one of the most famous characters in the western tradition, so much so that he has escaped his play and...
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W.B.Yeats' 'Politics'
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) I have been rereading Yeats. I recommend everyone with an interest in English poetry should do. It’s difficult to think of a collected poems which has so many great poems in it, or where the quality improves chronologically. This poem sits at the end of his ‘Last Poems’.…
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Roy Fisher's Birmingham Screwdriver.
This poem is an extract from 'Talking to Cameras', the first part of the sequence ‘Texts for a Film’. I laughed the first time I read it. As he explains, a Birmingham screwdriver is a hammer, I grew up in Coventry, about 20 miles away, and ent to university in Birmingham. I've often heard the...
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W.B.Yeats' 'The Fisherman'
W.B.Yeats (1865-1939) Who are you writing for? For anyone writing poetry the question seems essential. At some point in his career Yeats had wanted to be a national poet, writing for and on behalf of his country. But in this poem he renounces that ambition, having, he says, discovered that the...
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Two Epitaphs for an Army of Mercenaries
The second of these two poems was written in response to the first. A.E.Houseman (1859-1936) was one of the leading classical scholars of his day. Today he’s remembered as the author of ‘The Shropshire Lad’ , one of the most well known collections of poems from the first quarter of the last...
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from 'Watt' by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) Technically this isn’t a poem, but an extract from Beckett’s novel 'Watt' where it’s set out as continuous prose. But it’s too much fun to read to leave out on the grounds that it’s not ‘a poem’. If you want to tie your head in knots you can try to define ‘poetry’ and...
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Rudyard Kipling's 'The Last of the Light Brigade'
Rudyard Kipling: 1865-1936 This isn’t one of Kipling’s best poems. But it reveals a side of him most people ignore. The incident described here is probably apocryphal. The scorn in the last line depends on a play on the meanings of the word charge. It’s too vicious and carries too much contempt…
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Memory, from A Man of Heart.
This is taken from A Man of Heart, published by Shearsman press (2023) Maxim 1 History is a record of brutality tempered by outbursts of idealism. Memory There was never enough light. Even in summer, shade and shadows contour brightness. At night, torches and lamps shiver the edge of sight. The...
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The Wassail ceremony. Vortigern meets Rowena
If you’d like to see the Middle English version I based this on: Reowen sæt a cneowe; & cleopede to þan kinge. & þus ærest sæide; in Ænglene londe. Lauerd king wæs hæil; For þine kime ich æm uæin. Þe king þis ihærde; & nuste what heo seide. þe king Vortigerne; fræinede his cnihtes sone. what…
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Hengist Leaves for Britain. From Liam Guilar's 'A Man of Heart'.
This extract is taken from ‘A Man of Heart’ by Liam Guilar, published by Shearsman in January 2023. The Venerable Bede dated this event to 450 AD. The British, attacked on all sides, abandoned by Rome, hired mercenaries to help them to fight their enemies. Traditionally, they hired three boat…
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Michael Alexander's 'Beowulf Reduced'
Michael Alexander’s translations of Old English poetry, published by Penguin Classics, were my introduction to the literature of Anglo-Saxon England. His translation of Beowulf, carefully preserving the alliterative sound of the poem, was a ‘best seller’ in the world of translations. ‘Beowulf...
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Robert Browning's 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'
Robert Browning (1812-1889) There’s a story. A bemused reader asked Browning what this poem meant. ‘Well,’ said the poet, ‘when I wrote it only God and Robert Browning knew. Now only God knows.’ Sadly this conversation didn’t take place, and the comment was most likely made by a character called...
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William Shakespeare's 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow'
Macbeth Act five, scene five, lines 18-28 Why Shakespeare? It’s a question generations of students have asked. One of the good answers is that the plays contain passages like this where you can enjoy the way a few words can be made to do a great deal of work. Words associated with time…
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Jeremy Hooker's '1st of July 2016
Jeremy Hooker. (Born 1941) I’m assuming this poem was written to commemorate the Hundredth Anniversary of the first day of the Somme offensive in 1916. When i was at school we learnt the statistics; 60,00 casualties, 20, 00 of them dead. In one morning, between 7.30am and “lunch time”. By the end...
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Liam Guilar's 'Akhmatova's requiem'
I read the poem Requiem by Anna Akhmatova' on a previous podcast. Several things made this poem happen. WHile Akhmatova lived through Stalin’s times, many of the people who persecuted her are now forgotten, they are just ‘footnotes in her history’. I used her poem as part of a unit on poetry in...
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Rudyard Kipling's 'The Way through the Woods'.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) If it weren’t for the rhymes, this poem feels as though it could have been written by Thomas Hardy. Kipling could be tub thumpingly obvious when he wanted to be, riding a steady rhythm that takes his poems close to sing song. Here rhythm and rhyme are used to…
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Anna Akhmatova's 'Requiem'
Anna Akhmatova 1869-1966 ‘Requiem’ is Akhmatova’s memorial for those who waited with her outside the prison in Saint Petersburg in the 1930s, hoping for news of their loved ones during ‘the terrible years of the Yezhov Terror’. The context of the poem is explained properly in the second section…
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Patrick Kavanagh's 'Lines written on a seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin..'
The full title of this poems is: 'Lines written on a seat on the Grand Canal , Dublin, 'Erected to the memory of Mrs Dermot O'Brien' It belongs to a cluster he wrote later in life, and his friends took him at his word, clubbed together and made him a memorial which you can see in the picture. One...
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Taliesin's 'Marwnat Owein'. The lament for Owain son of Urien Rheged.
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...
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Alun Lewis' 'The Swan's way'
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....
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Liam Guilar's 'These heroics One and Two'.
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.…
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Dylan Thomas' 'The Force that though the green fuse drives the flower'
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...
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Susan Watson's 'Why she began to study the works of Sir Thomas Malory'.
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;...
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William Blake's 'London'.
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…
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Liam Guilar's 'Byron In Venice: The poet in Exile.'
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.…
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Miroslav Holub's ''A History lesson'
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...
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Randall Jarrell's 'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner'.
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.…
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Dafydd ap Gwilym's 'Love's affliction'. (Cystudd Cariad)
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.php Choose poem 82 from the...
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Luis Quintais' 'Amphitheatre' (trans Lesley Saunders)
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.....
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Liam Guilar's 'After the Funerals'
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...
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Hafez 'What memories' (trans Dick Davis)
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...
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from Prudentius' 'Hamartigenia'. On Free Will.
‘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…
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Jeremy Hooker's 'Novelty'
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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Jeremy Hooker's 'Gull on a Post'
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...
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Lewis Carroll's 'You are Old Father William'
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...
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William Wordsworth's 'The world is too much with us'. (Any requests?)
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...
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Meirion Jordan's 'Arawn Lord of Annwn'
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,...
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from Mathew Francis' 'The Mabinogi' Rhiannon's arrival
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…
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Dick Davis' 'A Translator's Nightmare'
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…
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Liam Guilar's 'Just once'
‘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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John Keats' 'When I have fears that I may cease to be'.
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…
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George Herbert's 'The Collar'
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...
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Alfred De Musset's 'On a Dead Woman' (Sur une Morte)
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…
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The Archpoet's confession
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’...
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Rudyard Kipling's 'If'
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…
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About this show
Readings of poems from Old English to the present.
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Liam Guilar
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