Critical Readings

Released on 24 April 2023:

In the first of a three-part series on Shakespeare’s Lucrece, the panel explores the Roman history and sources for the poem, before reading and examining its metaphors with a focus on Sextus Tarquinius’ internal debate and final, abhorrent resolution.

Released on 17 April 2023:

The panel reads three poems by the courtier, soldier, privateer, and poet, Sir Walter Raleigh, examining their formal (and informal) qualities, and discussing their connexions to other poetic endeavours and movements, and to contemporary events.

Released on 10 April 2023:

The panel reads and discusses the connexions between three poems by Seamus Heaney: “Blackberry Picking”, “Three-Piece”, and “Mycenae Nightwatch”, with attention to their formal aspects, and their use of highly emotive imagery and references to the past.

Released on 3 April 2023:

The panel reviews the work of “The People’s Poet”, Edgar A. Guest, national best-seller, sole Poet Laureate of Michigan, host of the A Guest in Your House radio programme, and author of innumerable verses filled with indefatigable, homespun optimism.

Released on 27 March 2023:

The panel reads three poems by Rupert Brooke, a poet of the Georgian movement of the early twentieth century, whose poetry of the early Great War period suggests sentiments and ideals which were about to be transformed by modernised warfare.

Released on 20 March 2023:

The panel reads three poems by Wilfred Owen, perhaps the greatest poet of the Great War, including his “Dulce et Decorum Est”, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, and “Spring Offensive”, with attention to their arresting imagery and formal characteristics.

Released on 13 March 2023:

The panel, joined by special guest Lane Haygood, reads H. P. Lovecraft’s Polaris, and discusses its rich symbolism, use of metaphor, deliberately archaic language, ambiguous resolution, and how its formal structure mirrors its narrative content.

Released on 6 March 2023:

The panel reads Alexander Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” and discusses its moral and ethical instruction alongside its waspish skewering of eighteenth-century “dunces”, including Colley Cibber, Lord Hervey, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague.

Released on 27 February 2023:

The panel reads Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” and discusses its connexion to the real Loxley Hall in Staffordshire, as well as the poem’s formal qualities, and its depiction of nineteenth-century British social, imperial, and military culture.

Released on 20 February 2023:

The panel closely reads four poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, focusing primarily on her sonnets, and evaluates their formal structure and potential metaphysical and theological implications, whilst connecting each poem to the others in turn.