The Poetaster
Episodes
John Donne, "Crucifying"
26 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Tim is frantically doing his homework ahead of Easter celebrations, and is keen to bounce some ideas around about John Donne's poem "Crucifying". Meta...
Alexander Pope
19 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Andy is solo for this quick trot through Augustan poetry and the work of its leading writer, Alexander Pope. Balance, harmony, wit, and style are hall...
Vincent O'Sullivan, "Blame Vermeer"
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Andy and Tim discuss Vincent O'Sullivan's response to the famous painting "The Milkmaid" by Vermeer. What happened before this woman started pouring t...
Denis Glover, "Sings Harry (2)"
05 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Denis Glover was at the heart of the New Zealand poetry scene in the mid-twentieth century, and in this episode Andrew and Tim discuss one of the poem...
John Clare, "The Yellowhammer's Nest"
26 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Join Tim and Andrew as they dive into the English undergrowth in the company of the Romantic period's version of David Attenborough, Northamptonshire ...
Francis Thompson, "At Lords"
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Cricket tragics Tim and Andrew reunite for the first episode of 2026 to discuss Francis Thompson's gently elegiac "At Lords". If you like what you hea...
Carol Ann Duffy, "Letters from Dead Men"
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we hope we'll be remembered after we're dead? Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy imagines the sorts of requests the living might receive from the de...
Seamus Heaney, "The Turnip Snedder"
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What on earth is a turnip snedder? Tim and Andrew debate this and other questions in their discussion of this poem from Nobel Prize-winning poet, Seam...
Wilfred Owen, "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young"
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tim continues to feel belligerent, and gets a bit biblical with Wilfred Owen's "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young". Some people interpret the s...
Wisława Szymborska, The End and the Beginning
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tim is in a belligerent mood and introduces Andrew to a poem by Polish Nobel-Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak. As...
ST Coleridge, Frost at Midnight
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"Frost at Midnight" is one of Coleridge's most well-known poems, and a fantastic example of what has come to be known as the Greater Romantic Lyric. T...
RS Thomas, Sea Watching
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tim shares his love for barren, windswept, bleak bird watching in this discussion of R. S. Thomas's poem 'Sea Watching'. Is there music in this scalpe...
Edward Thomas, As the Team's Head Brass
14 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Best known as a World War One poet, Edward Thomas also wrote some beautiful descriptions of English rural life. In "As the Team's Head Brass", he brin...
Sylvia Plath, Poppies in July
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sylvia Plath is one of the great American poets of the twentieth-century, as famous as much for her personal life as for her poetry. But how far shoul...
Peter Bland, Wellington
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you find your bearings in a new place, and can you transplant cultural touchstones from one side of the world to another? Peter Bland has a go ...
George Herbert, Love
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The patron saint of country vicars, George Herbert imagines a conversation with Love as a barmaid. Tim and Andy unpack the poem (and Tim points out th...
Robert Sullivan, Waka 76
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A bar room brawl is brewing but it's not what you might expect. In this poem, Robert Sullivan merges myth and reality, Maori and European and plots a ...
Mary Oliver, Heavy
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you overcome grief and loss? And what des it feel like when you do? Mary Oliver's "Heavy" tries to answer those questions, and talks about them...
LEL, The Factory
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Tim and Andrew take a look at one of the Victorian period's most popular poets, LEL - Letitia Elizabeth Landon - and her poem, "The F...
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Andrew and Tim discuss Sonnet 130, and agree it's a great option for anyone looking for a wedding reading. Along the way, they cover ...
Bill Manhire, Zoetropes
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The previous few episodes have been about centre-periphery dynamics, and in this episode former New Zealand Poet Laureate and general all-round legend...
Ursula Bethell, Mail
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you find a place in a rich tradition of English literature stretching back centuries when you're writing in a small colony on the far side of t...
John Dennison, The Garden
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John Dennison's "The Garden" draws on a long history of writing about gardens, going all the way back to the first garden of them all. Tim and Andrew ...
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Reverend Dr Tim McKenzie and the Irreverend Dr Andrew Smith talk Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, rhyme, rhythm and how to see the divine in ...
Anna Livesey, The Owl Cup
31 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do museums enforce a distance from the past or bring it closer to the present? On this episode of The Poetaster, we look at 'The Owl Cup' by New Zeala...
P. B. Shelley - Ozymandias; England in 1819
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Romanticism is all about walking through daffodils and exploring the growth of your own mind, right? Not according to Shelley. War against France got ...
William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey (Discussion)
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A discussion of William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey".If you like what you hear, why not make a small donation to keep us going? Find out more at coff....
William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey (Reading)
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Reading of William Wordsworth's "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, 13 July 1798"If you ...
John Clare - Two Gypsy Poems
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about two poems by Romantic poet John Clare - "The Gipsies Evening Blaze" and "The Gipsy Camp". Both sonnets discuss the same subject but in v...