I talked through the January eclogue with Jessica Beckman, assistant professor of English at Dartmouth College, from whom I learned so much about Colin’s sympathies with nature and the material history of this strange book. If you stay to the end you’ll hear her magnificent reframing of the E.K. question. You’ll also hear a kind of cadenza on the relationship between Spenser’s calendar and Beyonce’s album, Cowboy Carter, from Margo Kolenda-Mason at the University of Central Arkansas. You’ll also hear a poem—sort of about sheep—by Fernando Pessoa, beautifully read in Portuguese and English by Lucas Naccache-Pope. This episode is honoured to host a song—Lemany—by the folk musician Nick Hart, whose voice you heard a teasing snippet of if you listened to the September episode. Although it seems to start out on a fine summer morning, the song—like Colin—looks back on that warmth from a much sadder vantage point. It’s the fourth track from his acclaimed album Nick Hart Sings Ten English Folk Songs. Apart from all this and N.H. Chaundler’s regular installment, you’ll hear the austere January sounds of ice cracking and sliding across frozen ponds in mid Wales, and Hereford’s cathedral bells ringing out on a freezing January morning. A warning for your ears: Femi is away this month, and so I have done without expert mastering of sound levels; expect grittier transitions, and don’t be freaked out when you hear eery cracking noises: that’s ice in the podcast, not you, falling through the floor.
Thank you to Lucy and Tom for describing the woodcut, to Jessica Beckman for guiding us through this month’s eclogue, and to Joseph Minden for being Colin. Thank you to Nick Hart for sharing your version of ‘Lemany’ with us, to Margo Kolenda-Mason for sharing your thoughts, to Lucas for reading us Pessoa, and to N.H. Chaundler for your January reflection from the borderlands. Thank you Ella, James and Joe, my ice musicians. Thank you to the International Spenser Society for funding this podcast, to Ella Mahony for the artwork and to Femi Oriogun-Williams for making it sound good.
