The Poetry Tavern

This week in The Poetry Tavern, Charlotte explores poems inspired by the beauty and mystery of stars. From imaginative cosmic imagery to quiet, reflective stargazing, the episode contrasts science with wonder. Featuring works by Norman MacCaig and Walt Whitman, it delves into how we see our place in the universe. A short but thoughtful episode celebrating curiosity, perspective, and poetic awe.

Ocean inspired poetry exploring powerful themes and deeper meanings of the sea. The ocean reflects creativity, emotion, and the challenges of understanding poetry. Vivid imagery and layered interpretations reveal beauty, mystery, and depth. Perfect for poetry lovers seeking inspiration, analysis, and a deeper connection to nature and literature.

This week in The Poetry Tavern Charlotte explores poems inspired by music. Featuring Ghost Music by Robert Graves and Roof Nightclub by Ishion Hutchinson. A discussion of haunting melodies, dub music, chaos, and the atmosphere music creates in poetry. Next week’s theme will be poems about the ocean.

This episode explores poems centred on fire, beginning with Anne Bradstreet’s account of losing her home and the way faith reshapes her grief into gratitude. Charlotte reflects on resilience, perspective, and how surprisingly accessible a seventeenth century poem can feel. The discussion then turns to G. F. Bradby’s The Fireside, where glowing embers spark memories, nursery rhymes, and half forgotten stories. Together, the poems reveal fire as both destruction and illumination, a force that burns, comforts, and brings imagination to life.

In this episode, Charlotte dives into poems about aliens, from the tender metaphor of an unborn child in The Alien to the surreal outside observers of The White Fires of Venus. Together, they reveal how the unknown can feel strange, divine, and deeply human.

In this week’s episode, Charlotte explores the theme of coffee and what it represents in poetry. Moving away from poetic devices and into broader themes, she looks at how something as simple as a morning cup can hold deeper meaning. She discusses Prose Poem by Ron Padgett, where coffee becomes a quiet ritual between sleep and wakefulness, before the poem takes a surprising and darker turn. She also explores Breakfast by Jacques Prévert, a poem in which the careful preparation of coffee highlights emotional distance and unspoken sadness. From meditation to loneliness, this episode reflects on how everyday moments can carry powerful emotional weight. Next week’s theme will be aliens.

In this episode, host Charlotte dives into pleonasm, the use of seemingly unnecessary or doubled words, and asks whether excess language can still be purposeful, beautiful, or emotionally effective. Through close readings of poems by Mary Oliver and Stephen Sexton, this episode explores how repetition and reinforcement can deepen themes of comfort, ownership, memory, and beauty. Rather than treating pleonasm as a mistake, this conversation embraces it as a poetic tool, examining how even the smallest word choices can quietly reshape a poem’s emotional weight.

This week we are looking into the use of diacope within poetry, with examples from the work of Simon Armitage and Leopold Marks.

In this episode, we cover the use of anaphora, with poetry examples from Chen Chen and Sherine Gilmour.

This week we are talking about semantic fields, with examples in poetry from Jo Bratten and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The new year has finally come, so this week's episode is about poems from 2025, from Kathleen Ossip and John Jeremiah Sullivan.

This week, we are looking at Christmas poems, with examples from Sandra M Castillo, Christina Rossetti and Timothy Tocher