Remember I told you I had a couple of new poetry projects in the pipeline? The first one is now live. It’s a poetry podcast called A Mouthful of Air, that aims to reconnect poetry with its roots as an oral art – and reconnect poets with listeners. Here’s the introduction from the website, AMouthfulofAir.fm: […]
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New poems in Anthropocene, Brittle Star and Stand
I hope you have been keeping well and finding time for poetry in the midst of the upheavals of the past year. I’ve had a few poems published in magazines recently. You can read one of them online in (or should it be ‘at’?) Anthropocene. It’s called ‘Thirteen Birds’ and features different types of bird […]
Poem: Lockdown
Mark McGuinness · Lockdown You should be able to play the recording in the SoundCloud player above, but if not you can find it on SoundCloud here. Lockdown We’re cooped up with ourselves. Alone together for weeks or months until it’s safe to breathe. The virus crosses continents like weather. For now we’re stuck here, […]
(Audio) A Poem of Hope in Dark Times: The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
As the UK went into Coronavirus lockdown over the past few days this poem by Thomas Hardy kept coming into my mind. So I thought I’d read it for you and talk about how I think it speaks to us at a time like this. You should be able to play the recording in the […]
(Audio) Listen to Me Read from My Chaucer Translation at the Stephen Spender Prize Reception
I just noticed that the Stephen Spender Trust has added an audio recording to their website, of me reading from my Chaucer translation at the London reception for the 2016 Stephen Spender Prize. Click here to read the text, and here to listen to me read my translation of the opening stanzas of Troilus and […]