12 Dec 2018
Loughborough academics discuss festive poetry in podcast
A group of academics from the School of Arts, English and Drama have recorded a special Christmas episode for the School of Poetry podcast.
Dr Oli Tearle is an author, Lecturer in English at Loughborough and also host of the podcast, and is joined by his fellow colleague’s Dr Sara Read and Dr Barbara Cooke in the newest episode.
The School of Poetry podcast is both an entertaining and educating series dedicated to discussing and analysing the good – and the not so good – in the world of poetry.
The series has so far looked at themes including cats and breakups, but for this episode, the trio will be getting into the festive spirit and looking at Christmas-themed poems, although they cannot promise they will be quite so joyful.
They discuss Victorian poets such as Christina Rossetti, looking at the simplicity and repetition used in one of her most renowned pieces of work, In the Bleak Midwinter – but the question is, is it a carol or a song?
The Christmas special also includes the regular segments So Bad, It’s Good and One from the Vaults, a feature focusing on an underappreciated or lesser known poet. This episode focuses on the work of the seventeenth-century writer and poet Lady Hester Pulter.
Dr Barbara Cooke’s research focuses on twentieth-century and modernist (auto)biography and life writing, and she is currently working a project about the works of Evelyn Waugh.
Dr Sara Read is a Lecturer in English at the University, specialising in early modern literature and medicine. She recently explained how to make a traditional seventeenth-century mince ‘pye’ as part of the University’s Christmas campaign - the video can be viewed online.
Listen to the episode below or download from the iTunes store here. Previous episodes from the series can also be found online.