Podcast – a reading of “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” by S. T. Coleridge
Before I take on "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", which I look forward to doing, I thought I would warm up with a reading of a shorter, less dramatic but no less moving poem by Coleridge, one of his so-called "Conversation Poems"....
Podcast – a reading of “A Vision of Judgement” by Byron
The Romantics were all, to varying degrees, obsessed by Milton; but only Byron was able to give us a comic version of Paradise Lost.
The Deceptive Eye
Eye-rhymes and ear-rhymes: I composed the following poem quite simply as an exercise in spelling and pronunciation for my students. The challenge was for the students to identify the rhyming scheme – in particular, in the first ten stanzas. They
Crime in Venice in October
There will be four of us, all crime-fiction writers with books set in Italy, talking about our dastardly trade here in Venice. Tom Benjamin, David Hewson and Philip Gwynne Jones will be presenting their latest publications - and I may add a word or two about 'work in...
Podcast – a reading of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”
I won a prize at a poetry-reading competition for my reading of this poem when aged (I think) sixteen. It's probably fortunate that I don't have a recording of that performance. I suppose I've now reached a far more suitable age for this recitation. It's odd to think...
Podcast – a reading of “All the world’s a stage”
A reading of Jacques's speech from As You Like It.
Podcast – a reading of “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”
This is another dramatic monologue by Robert Browning, and this time it's about Venice. I wrote an essay on this poem, which was published in the very last issue of "Parnassus: Poetry in Review" (2019). Here are a couple of claims I made about it: 'It is one of...
Podcast – a reading of “My Last Duchess”
Here is a reading of what is perhaps Robert Browning's most famous dramatic monologue (helped by the fact that it's also the shortest), "My Last Duchess". It is one of the best portraits in all literature of a tyrant (and, of course, it's a self-portrait - though an...
Podcast: a reading of “The Eve of St Agnes”
Having recorded poems by Byron and Shelley it's high time I offered something by the third member of that extraordinary trio known as the 'second generation' of the Romantics. So here is a reading of Keats's narrative poem "The Eve of St Agnes". It's written in...
Podcast: “Content thee with a visionary rhyme”: The Witch of Atlas
Here is another long-ish poem by Shelley, his narrative "The Witch of Atlas". It is written in "ottava rima", the Italian stanza-form so skilfully used by his friend Byron, and shows a certain Byronic influence in its dexterity and lightness of touch. However, nothing...
Podcast – Ode to the West Wind
Today is the bicentenary of Shelley's death by drowning. By way of tribute here is a recording of what is almost certainly his greatest poem, "Ode to the West Wind". I have known this poem by heart for decades now and yet every time I read it or teach it I find new...
Podcast – a reading of Shelley’s “Adonais”
Here is my second podcast - another reading of a longish poem by a Romantic poet. Given that this is the bicentenary of Shelley's death (he drowned near Viareggio in July 1822), which occurred just a year after that of Keats, it seems suitable to read Shelley's elegy...