In this podcast, poet and Fellow of the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing, Sally Read discusses the poetry of Sylvia Plath.

"This talk is not about her beliefs or her struggles, what it will demonstrate, through text, is [Plath's] staggering poetic transformation, and show that, far from being the confessional in a self-aggrandising age, she underwent a purification in her work, that took it far beyond the personal...'

The Institute of Creative and Critical Writing is part of the School of English, at Birmingham City University (http://bcu.ac.uk/iccw).

The Dark Night of Sylvia Plath

Water Beetles: Wharram Percy

Arxaggelitikos

Sylvia Plath Interview 1962

Father John Misty's album Pure Comedy is available now on Deluxe 2xLP / 2xLP / CD / DL / CS in Europe through Bella Union and the rest of the world from Sub Pop.

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LYRICS:

Naturally the Dying Man wonders to himself
Had his commentary been more lucid than anybody else?
And had he successfully beaten back the rising tide
Of idiots, dilettantes and fools
That were on his watch 
While he was alive
Lord, just a little more time

Oh, in no time at all this will be the distant past

So says the Dying Man once I’m in the box
Just think of all the overrated hacks running amok
And all of the pretentious, ignorant voices that will go unchecked
The homophobes, hipsters and one percent
The false feminists he’d managed to detect
Who will critique them once he’s left?

In no time at all this will be the distant past

What he’d give for one more day to rate and analyze
The world made in his image as of yet to realize
What a mess to leave behind 

Eventually the Dying Man takes his final breath
But first checks his newsfeed to see what he’s about to miss
It occurs to him a little late in the game
We leave as clueless as we came
From the rented heavens to the shadows in the cave
We’ll all be wrong one day

We’ll all be wrong someday

Pure Comedy

Ballad Of The Dying Man

Blue-John's Mythical Creatures, a Whitby-esque LP released on May Day 2017, can be listened to at https://bluejohnbenjamin.bandcamp.com/album/mythical-creatures

Eggshell Blue: a cheery song about mental illness

The vicar wets his whistle
with liquor from a hipflask.
He’s fraying at the edges;
his mask begins to slip.
Wendy said she saw the Devil
in a damp patch on the wall.
She cleans on Tuesday mornings—
knew his faith was wearing thin.

Down the local rec, her nephew
picks the clubhouse lock.
He’d no ingredients for Food Tech,
so now he’s doing glue.
Later, using misdirection,
and ramping up the pathos,
Wendy says she sees an angel
in graffiti on the wall—
a wounded angel.

Paint the room eggshell blue!
A soothing, gently cleansing colour scheme;
a liberal coat of eggshell blue.
Let the light in—imprison the
winter night’s whispering of vampires.

She’s got a lifetime’s worth of songs and
books and films and
photographs of those departed;
all of them amount to what?
Secrets of the universe are bound up in
Nothing—difficult to un-imagine;
is Nothing what they think it isn’t?

Fictitious, fretful child,
your mother’s only flaw
was to love you for all time;
she could never let you go.
She began to see the answers
to long-forgotten questions—
patterns in black mould
expanding on the wall.

Not being a man’s man,
the vicar does the best he can—
goes with Wendy’s nephew
to the local boxing club.
Wendy is a hit
on the psychiatric wing.
She sees the good in everyone,
and gets us all to sing.
And gets us all to sing…

Paint the room eggshell blue!
A soothing, gently cleansing colour scheme;
a liberal coat of eggshell blue.
Let the light in—imprison the
winter night’s whispering of vampires.

I’m quite fond of Christmas coffee—
cinnamon muffins, too,
though I’d settle for a cup of brick-red tea, and
a sharing of secrets with you.
Eastertime eggshell blue,
Eastertime eggshell blue,
Eastertime eggshell blue.

Mythical Creatures

Eggshell Blue on BBCTees with Bob and Raphael Doyle, April 2017

I lie under a blanket of stars
I welcome the coming of the dark
I dance in the softness of the night 
Pale as the moon, I am glowing white

Though I am far away
Hear me sing lu lay, lu lay
I’ll put my arms around you
Hear me sing lay lay, lu lu

You are a man of day and dawn
When the sun comes I am forlorn
Why must I watch from afar as you toil in the sun 
Only to enfold you when the darkness comes

Though I am far away
Hear me sing lu lay, lu lay
I’ll put my arms around you
Hear me sing lay lay, lu lu

Lullaby for a Layman

Satirical Track about the new replica of the Barque Endeavour in Whitby.

Endeavour Not

My Luve Is Like a Red Red Rose

Doctor Rockit - Cafe De Flore (Charles Webster's Latin Lovers Mix)

01 Getting In Deep With You

Intergalactic Vault of Obscure Phraseology

Bluephoria (blōō~ fôr'ē-ə)
-noun

1. A genre of music supposedly invented by a ghostlike English songsmith;

2. A painstakingly crafted, sonic love letter characterised by buckled chords, bittersweet lyrics, warm woodiness, and a generous dusting of deliberate overambition;

3. That which is released on Derelict Roller Disco Records, a purely fictitious label;

4. A transient state of melancholic well-being induced by listening to the work of an ancient poet, and his Amateur Humans – an assemblage of loyal collaborators who, through thick and invariably thin, keep him company around the campfire.

Eggshell Blue on BBCTees with Bob and Raphael Doyle, April 2017

Blue-John Benjamin

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