In the fourth episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom ask: what was it like to go to the theatre in Athens in 468 BC? And how far do modern ideas about tragedy, derived from Aristotle, apply to Sophocles’ plays? They then look in more detail at Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone and what the plays have to say about agency and knowledge, and consider issues particular to Sophocles’ time, including civic responsibility and the role of immigrants in Athenian society. Non-subscribers can only hear e...
Apr 14, 2023•13 min•Season 5Ep. 4
In the fourth episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina climb inside a tiny cell to explore the Ancrene Wisse, a guidebook written in the early 13th century, originally intended for three anchoresses, but which enjoyed a much wider audience (there was even a copy in Henry VIII’s library). This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings...
Apr 04, 2023•11 min•Season 4Ep. 4
The third episode of The Long and Short turns to the short stories of Henry James. Mark and Seamus look in particular at ‘The Aspern Papers’, which, like Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, offers a diagnosis of obsession, in this case through a sensuous, excruciating and often comedic Venetian psychodrama. Mark and Seamus discuss the emergence of the short story at the end of the 19th century, and how certain features of the form – its attachment to unresolved endings, its debt to the dramatic monologue – can b...
Mar 24, 2023•10 min•Season 6Ep. 3
In the third episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom move from epic to lyric, with the poems of Sappho, or what remains of them. They consider what we know, and don’t know, about her life, and how her poetry challenges the heroic tradition, both in its subversion of Homeric ideas of war and nostos, and in its playful use of language. Non-subscribers can only hear extracts from most of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Dire...
Mar 14, 2023•12 min•Season 5Ep. 3
In the third episode of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina explore the much-chronicled life of St Cuthbert, as told by the most famous writer of the early medieval period, the so-called Venerable Bede. From Cuthbert’s childhood interest in naked handstands, to his later work as a charismatic preacher who could elicit total confession, and as a hermit who enjoyed the assistance of friendly sea otters, it was a life which, as told by Bede, both challenged and conformed to the expected patterns of...
Mar 03, 2023•10 min•Season 4Ep. 3
In the second episode of The Long and Short, Mark and Seamus turn to Walt Whitman's ‘Song of Myself’, from Leaves of Grass (1855), for Mark ‘one of the most exciting things literature has to offer’. They discuss the extraordinary physicality and exuberance of this seminal American poem, its relationship with urbanism, capitalism and sexuality, and its Johnny Appleseed-spirit, among many other things. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, s...
Feb 24, 2023•10 min•Season 6Ep. 2
In episode two of Among the Ancients, Tom and Emily turn to Homer’s Odyssey. They discuss the twisting, turning nature of both the narrative and its hero, the poem’s complex interrogation of the idea of ‘home’, and the violence Odysseus brings with him on his return from the Trojan War. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Emily ...
Feb 14, 2023•9 min•Season 5Ep. 2
In episode two of Medieval Beginnings, Mary and Irina turn the pages of the Exeter Book, a remarkable 10th century manuscript containing numerous poems and riddles, some of which are written in the voices of women. They consider in particular the enigmatic and beautiful ‘Wife’s Lament’ and ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’, and their numerous interpretations, and compare them to an extraordinary collection of letters written by influential women to St Boniface in the 8th century. Irina Dumitrescu is Professor...
Feb 03, 2023•10 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Mark Ford and Seamus Perry start their series, The Long and Short, with Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, a weird and disturbing poem about obsession that Tennyson himself was obsessed by. He would recite it in full at the drop of a hat, sometimes more than once, to friends and foes alike – even though it received notoriously bad reviews when it was published. This episode considers why the poem meant so much to him, and what it tells us about the Victorian age. This is an extract from the episode. To listen i...
Jan 24, 2023•10 min•Season 6Ep. 1
In their first episode of Among the Ancients, Emily and Tom begin with a beginning, Homer's Iliad: its depictions of anger and grief, of capricious gods and warriors’ bodies, and the sheer narrative force of Homer’s epic of the Trojan War. Non-subscribers can only hear extracts from the rest of the episodes in this series. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Read...
Jan 14, 2023•11 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu start their Medieval Beginnings series with Beowulf, a tale of monsters and heroes that is also a complex collection of interwoven stories about war and the conduct of a warrior society. They consider the poem’s preoccupations with kingship and a pagan past seen through the eyes of a Christian culture, as well as many of the mysteries which still surround its, not least its authorship and many narrative curiosities. Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Med...
Jan 04, 2023•11 min•Season 4Ep. 1
On the centenary of the publication of Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ in book form, Mark and Seamus finish the second series of Modern-ish Poets by considering how revolutionary the poem was, the numerous meanings that have been drawn out of it, and its lasting influence. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Further reading on Eliot in t...
Dec 10, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the lives and works of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, close friends and leading lights of the New York School, who sought to create an anti-academic, hedonistic poetry, freeing themselves from the puritan American tradition. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks...
Dec 09, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at the life and work of Charlotte Mew, who brought the Victorian art of dramatic monologue into the 20th century, and whose difficult experiences are often refracted through her damaged and marginalised characters. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Further reading on Mew in the LRB: Matthew Bevis: https:/...
Dec 08, 2022•48 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford continue their series with a look at the life and work of W.B. Yeats, from his early quest for a mythological Irish culture, to his shift towards the Modernist experiment, and preoccupation with the ‘murderousness of the world’. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at ...
Dec 07, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Seamus Perry, Mark Ford and Joanne O’Leary discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson—her dashes, death instinct and obliquity. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, Stevie Smith, A. E. Housman, Wallace Stevens, Sylvia Plath, Seamus...
Dec 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of the Saint Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, the island poet and playwright surrounded by an oceanic consciousness, whose writing recognises at once the terrible gulfs between peoples and our common predicament. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish P...
Dec 05, 2022•57 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the life and work of Louis MacNeice, the Irish poet of psychic divisions and authoritative fretfulness, in the fourth episode of series two of Modern-ish Poets. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, ...
Dec 04, 2022•57 min•Season 3Ep. 4
In the third episode of their second series of Modern-ish Poets, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford turn to the life and work of Adrienne Rich, in whose poems the personal becomes not only political, but epic. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas H...
Dec 03, 2022•56 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at the life and work of Robert Frost, the great American poet of fences and dark woods. They discuss Frost’s difficult early life as an occasional poultry farmer and teacher, his arrival in England in 1912 amid the flowering of Georgian poetry, and his emergence as the first 20th-century professional poet, whose version of the American wilderness myth, full of mischief and foreboding, took him to packed concert halls and a presidential inauguration. To listen to s...
Dec 02, 2022•57 min•Season 3Ep. 2
In the first episode of their second series of Modern-ish Poets, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford take on Gerard Manley Hopkins: Victorian literature’s only anti-modern proto-modernist queer-ecologist Jesuit priest. To listen to series one of Modern-ish Poets and to this series ad free, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Series one of Modern-ish Poets looks at Philip Larkin, W. ...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 1
In the fourth and final episode in their miniseries, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the life and work of pilgrim, entrepreneur and visionary mystic Margery Kempe, who dictated what is thought to be the first autobiography in English. To listen to Mary and Irina's series, Medieval Beginnings, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB: Barbar...
Nov 04, 2022•57 min•Season 2Ep. 4
In the third episode in their series, Irina and Mary discuss Chaucer’s sexually voracious professional widow, stealth preacher, vivid storyteller and teacher of love, the Wife of Bath. To listen to Mary and Irina's series, Medieval Beginnings, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB: Tom Shippey Sally Mapstone This episode was first published on the L...
Nov 03, 2022•55 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In the second episode in their series, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the work of mystic and anchoress Julian of Norwich, who wrote the first book in English that we can be sure was authored by a woman. To listen to Mary and Irina's series, Medieval Beginnings, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up here: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadings Further reading in the LRB: Mary Wellesley: This place is pryson ...
Nov 02, 2022•46 min•Season 2Ep. 2
In the final episode of series one of Modern-ish Poets, Mark and Seamus confront Robert Lowell: the Boston Brahmin for whom poetry trumped every other consideration, and whose Cold War ‘confessionalism’ came to exemplify a generation of Americans’ collective trauma; the poet who changed everything, but whose star has somehow fallen in recent years. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts here: https://appl...
Oct 10, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 10
For the ninth episode of their series, Seamus and Mark discuss the life and work of Seamus Heaney, whose first collection, Death of Naturalist, established him immediately as a leading poetic voice in world in which modernism seemed to have run its course. They look at how his work draws extensively on his childhood, its use of poetic sounds to bind him to his native ground, its intricate engagement with myth, and his questioning of what sort of poetry is appropriate for someone in his social an...
Oct 09, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Mark and Seamus are joined by Joanna Biggs, an editor at the LRB, to look at Sylvia Plath's life and poetry, for the eighth episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1. They consider the balance of biography and mythology in Plath’s work, situating her as a transatlantic, expressionist poet of the Cold War, and drawing on the LRB archive to talk about her funniness, ruthlessness, and uninhibited willingness to go anywhere to win the argument. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and t...
Oct 08, 2022•11 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In episode seven of their first series of Modern-ish Poets Mark and Seamus look to that great poet of winter and snow, Wallace Stevens, considering his anecdote-proof life, the capitalist economy of his imagination, and his all-American poetry of precise abstraction. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps here: lrb.me/closereadings Seamus Perry is Profe...
Oct 07, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In the sixth episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1, Mark and Seamus discuss the life and work of Worcestershire lad A. E. Housman, whose imaginative poetic landscape of a vanishing England in A Shropshire Lad, with its expression of the agony of thwarted love which can find no resolution, became a runaway bestseller during and after the First World War. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts here: https://...
Oct 06, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In the fifth episode of Modern-ish Poets Series 1 Mark and Seamus discuss the life and work of Stevie Smith, ‘an eccentric poet with a tenacious reputation,’ and a famous performer of her poetry, considering the despair that underlines her best work, its tonal slipperiness, her exceptional facility with rhyme and off-rhyme, and her use of faux-naif personas and perspectives. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple ...
Oct 05, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 5
