Shows
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 25 - I Love Sidney & MarloweWe wrap up 2020 with several pieces by Sir Philip Sidney and Christopher Marlowe.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-12-2810 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 24 - Taking Thomas Hardy on FaithAfter a very 2020 hiatus, we're back with two of Thomas Hardy's poems, God's Funeral and The Darkling Thrush.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-11-2709 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 23 - Shakespeare's Sonnet 127This episode we share the first of Shakespeare's Sonnets to the Dark Lady, Sonnet 127, alongside a brief contextual reading of the piece.
This episode was inspired by Patrick Stewart's A Sonnet a Day initiative, which has been a source of much delight in recent months, but overlooked this one piece during a break.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-09-0706 min
Requisite Words PodcastShakespeare's better foot - The Nice SonnetsWe attempt to balance out the bawdy and bluest of the Bard with a few of his nicer Sonnets.
Featuring Sonnets 17, 18, 19 and 29.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-07-2809 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 21 - How to writeThis episode is for anyone who's ever stared at a blank page, waiting for the words to come.
We explore one possible solution, using a walkthrough of an untitled poem I published on Twitter, in a thread started by @scotianselkie.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-06-0513 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 20 - Shakespeare's Junk Strikes BackBy popular request, a sequel to Episode Seven. Reeling from the hit success of Sonnet 135, Shakespeare penned Sonnet 136, which continued the argument for... well, a close reading of the Bard's breeches.
Not safe for work, children, or anyone who thinks the world has heard enough dick jokes.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image: Public Domain portrait of William Shakespeare, sans junk.
Note: The title of this episode was edited on 5 June, after one of the words was appropriated by fascist fringe gr...
2020-04-1117 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 19 - The LimerickThis episode is for anyone who wants to spend a little time getting creative while staying at home. It’s kid-safe, although it contains farts, and acknowledges the existence of adult themes.
Kia kaha, whānau.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-03-2405 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 18 - "The face of all the world is changed, I think"Content note: A brief discussion of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Also contains a dog.
Anxiety and similar conditions can be exacerbated in times of uncertainty, so future episodes during the pandemic will feature content warnings where relevant. While the poems shared may remain directly or tangentially relevant to the global situation, mention of Covid-19 will be avoided after this episode.
Two of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's works feature in this episode, recorded from self-isolation.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-03-1911 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 17 - You can't read that!This episode discusses "Still I Rise," by Maya Angelou, in unpacking why you're hearing so much historical (if still relevant) poetry in these parts, and little from the diverse voices of the now.
Read Still I Rise at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise
Watch and listen to Maya Angelou perform her work at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qviM_GnJbOM
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image of Maya Angelou is in the public domain, sourced from Wikimedia.org
2020-03-1307 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 16 - A Grecian love storyWe celebrate a somewhat healthier love in this Valentine's Day episode, with Mary Shelley's "Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!" and provide some context for the Greek myth it draws on.
For more on the mythology of Psyche and Eros, the following links are a good starting point:
https://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/eros-psyche/
https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Eros_and_Psyche/eros_and_psyche.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid_and_Psyche
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2020-02-1408 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 15 - Stop with the murdery love alreadyExploring Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" as a murder ballad that arguably... isn't.
In this episode we consider another reading of the work, in which Browning's poem parodies and logically dismantles problematic tropes about love.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Picture is by Herbert Rose Barraud, a Woodburytype portrait of Robert Browning, and is in the Public Domain. Sourced from Wikimedia.org
2020-01-3115 min
Requisite Words PodcastWelcome to 2020?We haven't had the most auspicious start to the new decade. This episode we share two poems that might offer, respectively, a challenge to critical awareness and a gentle exercise in empathy.
Featuring "Porphyria's Lover" by Robert Browning and "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image reproduced from "Poems by Wilfred Owen," 1920, sourced from wikimedia.org and in the public domain.
2020-01-1709 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 13 - Shut OutPoetry meets politics as we misappropriate Christina Rosetti's "Shut Out" in honour of the UK election (underway as this episode goes live).
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Photo: London, UK, by Sid Ali from Pexels.com
2019-12-1203 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 12 - Catch-22 and Colossus, tooA celebration of the sonnet form, featuring a catch-22 resolved in the first English sonnet sequence, by Anne Locke, two works by Charlotte Smith, and the sonnet that accompanies The Statue of Liberty - The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2019-11-2909 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 11 - The Walrus and the JabberwockThere is a certain frurgle
whose contempules I abhor
but although my stronders gurgle
by his whorkling am I zor
This episode is brought to you with a light spattering of paint, a lungful of fumes, and two nonsense poems that I should have but didn't have memorised: Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image: Public domain courtesy of Joel Garlich-Miller, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, sourced through Wikimedia.org
2019-11-1508 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 10 - Of Lucy and lossWordsworth's Lucy Poems are a five part meditation on love in the face of grief. Among the finest Romantic works, we share the works and unpack each part of the sequence, and they way they fit together.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image: William Wordsworth: A Life. Public domain reproduction from wikimedia.org
2019-11-0114 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 9 - A continuationContinuing last episode's sampler of poems that appear and influence later and contemporaneous works, this episode includes works by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Edmund Spenser, Percy Shelley, and more Elizabeth Barrett Browning, because we can.
References to xkcd.com include numbers 788 and 1557.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image: Daguerrotype of Emily Dickinson, Public Domain image courtesy of Wikimedia.org
2019-10-1710 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 8 - And long may they stealPoetry isn't always high profile, but we encounter more of it than we might realise. From The Silence of the Lambs, to The Dark Tower, to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, poetry often seeps into other genres, where it can inhabit the reader's mind long after the prose has escaped.
In this episode I share a few poems hidden away in other works - strongly biased towards books I've read recently or within sight of my desk.
Includes poems by Tolkien, Byron, Blake, Wordsworth, and Poe.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2019-10-0300 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 7 - Shakespeare's JunkWe get down and uncomfortably dirty with the Bard this episode, in pursuit of ambiguity and insight with William Blake's "The Tyger," Shakespeare's Sonnets 130 and 135, and Christina Rossetti's "'No, Thank You, John'".
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image: "The Tyger" from William Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience". Photo by Peter Ravlich and reproduced under Fair Use.
2019-09-2000 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 6 - Equilibria and autonomyWe examine three readings of Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott, through the lenses of Creativity, Feminism, and Adolescence.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image: "The Lady of Shalott" by Walter Crane, 1862, oil on canvas. Public domain image, courtesy of Wikimedia.org
2019-09-0600 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 5 - The Lady of ShalottSpend some time contemplating an ambiguous curse as we listen to Alfred Tennyson's best-known narrative poem, "The Lady of Shalott" (1842 version).
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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2019-08-2300 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 4 - A home for my wordsWe veer away from poetry this episode and crash into a recurring question from aspiring writers: the ideal writing environment.
I share "A home for my words," a reflection I wrote for Medium a couple of years ago, amended slightly for the podcast.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image:
Photo by Peter Ravlich
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2019-08-0600 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 3 - A Man's RequirementsIn which we admire Elizabeth Barrett Browning's biting call-out of Victorian hypocrisy and gender politics, A Man's Requirements.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Image:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, public domain image from WikiMedia.org
2019-07-2600 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 2 - A story about a poemIn this episode, we unpack and reflect on Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, by Matthew Arnold.
Content warning: contains some mild swearing.
Episode Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Dreamers Of The Day by Serge Narcissoff | https://soundcloud.com/sergenarcissoff
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2019-07-1200 min
Requisite Words PodcastEpisode 1 - Stanzas from the Grande ChartreuseRequisite Words is a podcast about poetry and its place in modern lives.
Alternate episodes will share and then discuss a diverse range of poems from around the world.
This opening episode is a reading of Matthew Arnold's 1851 work, "Stanzas From the Grande Chartreuse," a poem that touches on notions of value, transience and upheaval.
Opening Music:
Be Chillin’ by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
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Photo of the Grande Chartreuse Monastery by Floriel (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Floriel)
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2019-06-2800 min