Research English At Durham

Sound is part of our everyday life experience, but it’s hard to understand and define its meaning and workings; sound can feel strange or unfamiliar when we try to put it into words. Professor Helen Abbott, a specialist in nineteenth-century French poetry and music at the University of Birmingham, introduces us to various ways we might grasp on what sound is, especially through its relationship with voice and language.

For copyright reasons we are unable to include the music recordings themselves in this podcast. However, you can listen to most of the missing tracks via Helen Abbott's Spotify playlist.

For more information visit https://wp.me/p2iX9Z-7qc

The title of Liz Berry’s first, multi-award-winning poetry collection, Black Country, signals her place of birth - and unsurprisingly the book was described by reviewers as a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’. A more symbolic place is visited in her second pamphlet, The Republic of Motherhood, which maps the transformative experience of giving birth and raising her children. Suzannah V. Evans explored Liz Berry’s personal landscapes in conversation at the StAnza Poetry Festival. 

For more information visit https://wp.me/p2iX9Z-7qL

Listen to Aurélia Lassaque, a French poet and performer who writes, sings, and speaks in French, English and Occitan – a language spoken in parts of Southern France, Northern Spain and Italy. In this podcast you’ll hear her different uses of voice as she reads and sings her work, and then an interview with Suzannah V. Evans in which they discuss the imaginative experience of writing poetry across multiple languages, and the relation between poetry, sound and music. 

Find out more at https://wp.me/p2iX9Z-7qa

Meet Arya Thampuran and Katie Harling-Lee, two PhD researchers who have particular interests in contemporary fiction, and who have set up a new network to draw you into the conversation as well.  

For more information visit https://wp.me/p2iX9Z-7qm   and https://modcondurham.wordpress.com/ 

In December 2018 we lost our colleague, teacher and friend Professor Michael O’Neill. Just before he died, Michael had completed his fifth collection of poetry, Crash and Burn and so, at a poignant poetry reading, we were able to remember Michael by celebrating the launch of this posthumous new work, while also looking back at his earlier poetry and the poetry he cared for by other writers. 

This podcast is an edited version of readings and reminiscences from Dr Sarah Wootton, the poet Jamie McKendrick, and Michael’s colleagues Professor Stephen Regan, Professor Jason Harding and Professor Mark Sandy. 

For more details visit https://wp.me/p2iX9Z-7mR

Are philosophy and literature two distinct disciplines, divided by a common language? Emphatically not, according to Michael Mack and Barry Stocker, editors of the new The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature. In this podcast, we caught up with Michael and Barry to learn how the power of the imagination, literary uses of language, and an interest in ethics link the two approaches together. 

For more information see http://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com