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 stron...
Jan 08, 2020•3 min•Ep. 106
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 ma...
Jan 06, 2020•1 min•Ep. 106
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 sentence: H...
Jan 02, 2020•4 min•Ep. 105
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, ...
Dec 31, 2019•1 min•Ep. 104
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 Caedmo...
Dec 25, 2019•3 min•Ep. 103
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’.
Dec 24, 2019•1 min•Ep. 102
‘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 edition of t...
Dec 19, 2019•2 min•Ep. 101
‘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 www.liamguilar.com ...
Dec 19, 2019•5 sec•Ep. 100
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 stan...
Dec 17, 2019•1 min•Ep. 99
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.
Dec 12, 2019•1 min•Ep. 98
