The Poetry Tavern

This episode of The Poetry Tavern explores poetry inspired by birds, from mythological symbolism to everyday moments of empathy. Charlotte reflects on works by Carl Phillips and Craig Ong, examining how birds are used to express memory, emotion, and connection. The discussion moves between the haunting aftermath of transformation and the quiet tenderness of noticing small suffering. Through thoughtful insight, the episode reveals how poetry uses birds to mirror human experience and compassion. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/birds Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/40 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This episode of The Poetry Tavern explores poems centered on Earth, from the vastness of the planet to the intimacy of the ground beneath us. Charlotte reflects on works by Fernando Pessoa and Sharon Olds, examining humanity’s connection to nature and existence. Through themes of life, death, and natural balance, the episode highlights how human emotion mirrors the rhythms of the Earth. Blending thoughtful insight with accessible discussion, it invites listeners to see the world around them in a deeper, more connected way. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/earth Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/39 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This episode of The Poetry Tavern explores poetry inspired by planets, with a special focus on Pluto and Neptune. Charlotte shares powerful poems that reflect themes of rebellion, isolation, and hope through cosmic imagery. Blending raw energy with emotional depth, the episode connects distant planets to deeply human experiences. Through thoughtful discussion, it reveals how poetry can turn the vastness of space into something personal and meaningful. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/planets Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/38 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week in The Poetry Tavern, Charlotte explores poems inspired by the beauty and mystery of stars. From imaginative cosmic imagery to quiet, reflective stargazing, the episode contrasts science with wonder. Featuring works by Norman MacCaig and Walt Whitman, it delves into how we see our place in the universe. A short but thoughtful episode celebrating curiosity, perspective, and poetic awe. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/stars Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/37 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

Ocean inspired poetry exploring powerful themes and deeper meanings of the sea. The ocean reflects creativity, emotion, and the challenges of understanding poetry. Vivid imagery and layered interpretations reveal beauty, mystery, and depth. Perfect for poetry lovers seeking inspiration, analysis, and a deeper connection to nature and literature. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/ocean Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/36 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week in The Poetry Tavern Charlotte explores poems inspired by music. Featuring Ghost Music by Robert Graves and Roof Nightclub by Ishion Hutchinson. A discussion of haunting melodies, dub music, chaos, and the atmosphere music creates in poetry. Next week’s theme will be poems about the ocean. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/music Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/35 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This episode explores poems centred on fire, beginning with Anne Bradstreet’s account of losing her home and the way faith reshapes her grief into gratitude. Charlotte reflects on resilience, perspective, and how surprisingly accessible a seventeenth century poem can feel. The discussion then turns to G. F. Bradby’s The Fireside, where glowing embers spark memories, nursery rhymes, and half forgotten stories. Together, the poems reveal fire as both destruction and illumination, a force that burns, comforts, and brings imagination to life. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/fire Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/34 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, Charlotte dives into poems about aliens, from the tender metaphor of an unborn child in The Alien to the surreal outside observers of The White Fires of Venus. Together, they reveal how the unknown can feel strange, divine, and deeply human. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/aliens Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/33 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this week’s episode, Charlotte explores the theme of coffee and what it represents in poetry. Moving away from poetic devices and into broader themes, she looks at how something as simple as a morning cup can hold deeper meaning. She discusses Prose Poem by Ron Padgett, where coffee becomes a quiet ritual between sleep and wakefulness, before the poem takes a surprising and darker turn. She also explores Breakfast by Jacques Prévert, a poem in which the careful preparation of coffee highlights emotional distance and unspoken sadness. From meditation to loneliness, this episode reflects on how everyday moments can carry powerful emotional weight. Next week’s theme will be aliens. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/coffee Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/32 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, host Charlotte dives into pleonasm, the use of seemingly unnecessary or doubled words, and asks whether excess language can still be purposeful, beautiful, or emotionally effective. Through close readings of poems by Mary Oliver and Stephen Sexton, this episode explores how repetition and reinforcement can deepen themes of comfort, ownership, memory, and beauty. Rather than treating pleonasm as a mistake, this conversation embraces it as a poetic tool, examining how even the smallest word choices can quietly reshape a poem’s emotional weight. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/pleonasms Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/31 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week we are looking into the use of diacope within poetry, with examples from the work of Simon Armitage and Leopold Marks. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/diacope Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/30 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, we cover the use of anaphora, with poetry examples from Chen Chen and Sherine Gilmour. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/anaphora Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/29 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week we are talking about semantic fields, with examples in poetry from Jo Bratten and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/semantic-fields Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/28 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

The new year has finally come, so this week's episode is about poems from 2025, from Kathleen Ossip and John Jeremiah Sullivan. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/poems-from-2025 Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/27 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week, we are looking at Christmas poems, with examples from Sandra M Castillo, Christina Rossetti and Timothy Tocher Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/christmas-2025 Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/26 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this weeks episode, we are looking at archaism in poetry, with examples from Robert Frost and Tim Turnball. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/archaism Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/25 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, we are looking at dialogism and conversation within poetry, with examples from Galway Kinnell and Louise Gluck. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/dialogism Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/24 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

Looking at the Beat Generation, with poetry examples from Amiri Baraka and Gary Snyder. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/the-beat-generation Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/23 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week we are talking about various different rhyme schemes, with examples from Abbie Farwell Brown and Francis Duggan Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/rhyme-schemes Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/22 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week we are talking about poems that use personification, looking at examples from Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/personification Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/21 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

We're covering lyric poems in this episode, looking at examples of this classic form from Clive Staples Lewis and Nikki Giovanni. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/lyric-poetry Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/20 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, we talk about extended metaphors within poetry, with examples from Elizabeth Bishop and Jose A Alcantara. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/extended-metaphors Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/15 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This episode, we are looking at poems that contain puns and word play, exploring the different ways it can be used in poetry. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/puns Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/14 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, we are talking about anthropomorphism, giving animals human characteristics, looking at poems by Vachel Lindsay and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/allegory Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/13 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, we are talking about anthropomorphism, giving animals human characteristics, looking at poems by Vachel Lindsay and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/anthropomorphism Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/12 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This episode is all about poems talking about writing poetry, with works by Marianne Moore and Charles Bukowski Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/ars-poetica Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/11 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week, we cover haikus, both those translated from Japanese and those written in the English language, covering a range of topics. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/haiku Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/8 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week is all about acrostic poems, looking at poems from both Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe, seeing poems that each use variations on the acrostic form. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/acrostic Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/4 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

This week, we are talking all about Sonnets, both what they are and discussing specific examples, with poems by Christina Rossetti and Rafael Campo. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/sonnets Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/3 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In this episode, we talk about the different ways in which repetition can be used within poetry, looking at examples from Lewis Carroll and Maya Angelou. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/repetition Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/2 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.

In our opening episode, we discuss what poetry actually is, including discussing how it goes beyond what we are sometimes told or expect. Your host, Charlotte, explains, while peppering a handful of poems, old and new, throughout. Welcome to a brand new show, about poetry and all its parts. Show Notes: Listen online: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/episodes/what-is-poetry Download: https://thepoetrytavern.co.uk/download/1 Subscribe to The Poetry Tavern for more episodes about poetry, literature, and the art of verse.