Not Knowing About Poetry

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A podcast that does its best to know something about poetry, and fails.

Episodes

  1. 01/16/2022

    Season 2, Episode 4: Roger Christofides on George Seferis and Shakespeare

    Roger Christofides discusses 'Neofitos Engleistos Speaks' (1953) by George Seferis, in connection with Shakespeare's play Othello. Roger is a Shakespeare scholar with a book on Othello that you can buy here - https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/R-M-Huddersfield-University-UK-Christofides/Othellos-Secret--The-Cyprus-Problem/18893065 .  ''Neofitos Engleistos Speaks' is not included in the major translations of Seferis' works.  A translation by John Stathatos (first printed in Labrys 8, 1983) is included below. You can find the Greek text here - https://www.greek-language.gr/digitalResources/literature/tools/concordance/browse.html?cnd_id=1&text_id=3183 . Neofitos Engleistos Speaks …. as for king Isaac, he imprisoned him in the castle known as Marcappo. And as for his colleague Saladin, the rogue took no action against him, but instead sold the country to the Latins for twelve hundred measures of gold. Which was the cause of great lamentation, and as foretold, the smoke coming from the north became unbearable… (Neofitos the Monk, Concerning the Wrongs done to the Land of Cyprus) Overbearing structures; Hilarion Famagusta Bufavento; mere backdrops hardly how we used to conceive of that ‘Jesus Christ Triumphs’ once seen above the walls of the Imperial City, now pocked with weeds and hovels and the great towers cast down like some defeated giant’s dice. It had meant something else to us, this war for Christ’s faith and for man’s soul cradled by Our Lady of Victories her eyes holding the anguish of the Greeks like a mosaic, the anguish of that sea at the approach of kindness. What if they strut their Lusignan melodramas against crusader backdrops while we gag on the smoke from northern torches. Let them hack at each other, beating the wind like a galley before the storm. You are welcome to Cyprus, Lords. Goats and monkeys!

    Season 2, Episode 4: Roger Christofides on George Seferis and Shakespeare

  2. 01/16/2022

    Season 2, Episode 3: Callie Gardner on June Jordan and Shakespeare

    Callie was an inspirational conversationalist when this podcast started during lockdown, thanks to their unforced enthusiasm, extraordinary depth of knowledge, and consistently perceptive interpretations. In this episode you will hear them discuss June Jordan's ‘Shakespeare’s 116th sonnet in Black English Translation’. The recording was made on June 24th, 2021.  Don’t let me mess up partner happiness  because the trouble  start  An’ I ain’ got the heart  to deal!  That won’t be real  (about love)  if I (push come to shove)  just punk  Not hardly! Hey:  Love do not cooperate  with cop-out  provocations: No!  Storm come, storm go Away but love stay  steady  (if you ready or  you not!)  True love stay  steady  True love stay  hot!

    Season 2, Episode 3: Callie Gardner on June Jordan and Shakespeare

  3. 01/16/2022

    Season 2, Episode 2: Mau Baiocco on Emily Critchley, Eric Langley, and Shakespeare

    Mau discusses Critchley and Langley's pamphlet These. Insuing. Sonnets (Crater Press, 2018) and Shakespeare's sonnets.

    Season 2, Episode 2: Mau Baiocco on Emily Critchley, Eric Langley, and Shakespeare

  4. 01/16/2022

    Season 2 Episode 1: Jack Belloli on R. F. Langley and Elizabeth Havers' memorial

    Jack talks about Langley's poem 'Achilles' as found in his Complete Poems (Carcanet, 2015), alongside the memorial to Elizabeth Havers in the church of St Peter's in Stockerston (Leicestershire).

    Season 2 Episode 1: Jack Belloli on R. F. Langley and Elizabeth Havers' memorial

  5. 03/04/2021

    Episode Eight: U. A. Fanthorpe, Macbeth, and Leo

    Leo and Joel talk about U. A. Fanthorpe's Poem 'What, In Our House?' (from her 1995 collection *Safe as Houses*), and a section of *Macbeth*.

  6. 02/19/2021

    Episode Seven: Thom Gunn, John Donne, Ellie and Şima

    Ellie, Şima and Joel talk about Thom Gunn's poem 'The Hug' (from his 1992 collection *The Man with the Night Sweats*) and John Donne's poem 'The Ecstacy' (from some time in the early seventeenth century).  You can access texts of the poems at these links:  Gunn - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57038/the-hug  Donne - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44099/the-ecstasy

  7. 02/06/2021

    Episode Six: J. H. Prynne, The Tempest, and Joey

    Joey and Joel talk about passages from Prynne's pamphlet Pearls That Were (1999) and the song 'Full Fathom Five' from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

  8. 01/22/2021

    Episode Five: Sarah Howe, Philip Sidney, and Lucy

    Lucy and Joel discuss Sarah Howe's poem 'The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia' (from *A Loop of Jade*) and a letter from Sir Philip Sidney.

  9. 01/10/2021

    Episode Four: Zaffar Kunial, George Herbert, and Şima

    Şima and Joel discuss Zaffar Kunial's poem 'Prayer' (from his 2018 collection *Us*) and one of George Herbert's poems of the same name from 1633.  Kunial's poem can be found here - https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/prayer-2/ .  This is Herbert's poem:  Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-days world transposing in an hour, A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, Exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest, The milky way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, The land of spices; something understood.

  10. 12/24/2020

    Episode Three: Veronica Forrest-Thomson, William Shakespeare, and Callie

    Callie and Joel discuss Veronica Forrest-Thomson's poem 'Richard II' and an extract from Shakespeare's play of the same name.

  11. 12/11/2020

    Episode Two: Richard Scott, William Shakespeare, and Leo

    Leo and Joel talk about 'Public LIbrary, 1998' by Richard Scott, and Shakespeare's sonnet 20.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50425/sonnet-20-a-womans-face-with-natures-own-hand-painted

  12. 11/27/2020

    Episode One: Eavan Boland, Anne Bradstreet and Sima

    Şima and Joel talk about the Eavan Boland poem 'Becoming Anne Bradstreet' and the Anne Bradstreet Poem 'The Author to Her Book' .  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55336/becoming-anne-bradstreet https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43697/the-author-to-her-book

  • 12 Episodes

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A podcast that does its best to know something about poetry, and fails.

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