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

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Crime in Venice in October
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...

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Podcast – a reading of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”
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...

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Podcast – a reading of “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”
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...

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Podcast – a reading of “My Last Duchess”
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...

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Podcast: a reading of “The Eve of St Agnes”
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...

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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...

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Podcast – a reading of Shelley’s “Adonais”
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...

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