Not Knowing About Poetry

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!

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! 

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

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). 

Joey and Joel get together to talk about Prynne for the second time - this time looking at a section of his book *The Oval Window* (1983), starting 'At the onset of the single life', that responds to a speech by Lavatch from act 4 scene 5 of *All's Well That Ends Well*. 

This is Lavatch's speech: 

"I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great fire; and the master I speak of ever keeps a good fire. But, sure, he is the prince of the world; let his nobility remain in's court. I am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp to enter: some that humble themselves may; but the many will be too chill and tender, and they'll be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire." 

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*. 

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 

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. 

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. 

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.