For diplomats coming to the court of Charles I, it was more than a case  of knocking at the door and being shown in. In this Late Summer Lectures  podcast, Kimberley Foy uses the experience of visiting ambassadors to  show how attending the court of Charles I involved a carefully  choreographed set of moves, through particular spaces.

For more information and an accessible transcript, visit our blog.

In this podcast from our Late Summer Lectures series, Kathleen Foy from  Durham University explains how James Shirley’s 1639 tragedy The Politician reflected the court and politics of Charles I.

For more information and an accessible transcript, visit our blog.

In this podcast from our Late Summer Lectures series, Dr Amanda Blake  Davis of the University of Sheffield takes us on a flight through birds  and embodiment in the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.

For more information, and an accessible transcript, visit: https://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com/?p=30434

In this podcast from our Late Summer Lectures series, Alex Hobday  (University of Cambridge) examines how eighteenth-century culture sought to answer that eternal question: what is happiness, and how can we achieve it?

For more information, and an accessible transcript, visit: https://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com/?p=30441

In a wide-ranging interview, Pulitzer-prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley explains  how literary characters take on a life of their own, reflects on the  representation of the body in literature, and examines her own status as  a female novelist emerging in the 1970s. This conversation between Dr Jennifer Terry and Jane Smiley was recorded at the Literary Dolls conference in 2014.

Find out more at READ: Research English At Durham.

The Centre for Poetry and Poetics held an evening to celebrate the poetry and influence of T.S. Eliot.  Dr Gareth Reeves and Professor Jason Harding, two scholars who specialise in Eliot’s life and works, read from Eliot's own poetry and that of later poets such as Donald Davie and Hart Crane who were inspired by him.

Find out more at READ: Research English At Durham.

John Clegg’s first collection, Antler,  features prehistoric landscapes, folk tale and myth. John’s  reading includes a history of a city in four stanzas, and the story of  an “ice road trucker.” John Clegg’s poetry is published by and copyright  of Salt Publishing.

Find out more at READ: Research English At Durham.

Gareth Reeves’ third collection, To Hell With Paradise: New and Selected Poems,  has just been published by Carcanet. In this reading from the  collection, Gareth adopts a range of intriguing perspectives and voices,  including that of a cash machine looking at a man trying to withdraw  his money, and Dimitri Shostakovich thinking about bird droppings.  Gareth Reeves’s collection is published by and copyright of Carcanet.

Find out more at READ: Research English At Durham.

Two of the Department’s published poets, Gareth Reeves and his PhD student John Clegg, explore how their writing of poetry relates to  their research. 

They explain how they began writing poetry rather than writing about poetry, and discuss how writing poetry gives them unique insights into  the forms and methods employed in the work of other poets.

Find out more at READ: Research English At Durham.

A century and a half since his birth, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats is one  of the best-loved in the English language, known for his lyric poems  such as ‘The Lake Isle of Innishfree’ or for romantic poems like ‘He  Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.’ Throughout his literary career,  though, Yeats wrote in a range of styles and on diverse subjects. His  poems reflect his Irish nationalism, reinvent traditional genres, draw  inspiration from Irish myth and legend, and push into innovative  symbolism. Stephen Regan and Michael O’Neill take us on a journey  through the varied landscape of Yeats’s verse.

Find out more at READ: Research English At Durham.