The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle

The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle

Author: The Ceylon Press Language: English Episodes: 89
There’s a particular sound to the jungle-a layered quiet of leaves, birds, and distant water. It’s from within that atmosphere that The Sri Lanka Podcast: Poetry From The Jungle finds its voice. Produced by The Ceylon Press, each episode is recorded at the Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, nestled in the wilds northwest of Kandy. This isn’t a standard literary analysis show; it’s an experience of resonance. Here, timeless poems by renowned authors are read aloud, allowing their rhythms and meanings to intertwine with the ambient sounds of a Sri Lankan forest. The setting does more than provide backdrop-it actively shapes how you hear each word, offering a fresh and quietly profound perspective on verses you thought you knew. This podcast invites a slower kind of listening, where a classic sonnet might be punctuated by a monsoon shower or the call of a hornbill. It’s for anyone who believes place matters, that the environment where a story is told becomes part of the story itself. Tune in for a unique fusion of the literary and the natural, a deliberate retreat into the world of spoken art framed by one of the planet’s most vibrant soundscapes.
Episodes
Thom Gunn.  The Man with Night Sweats. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:49
I wake up cold, I who Prospered through dreams of heat Wake to their residue, Sweat, and a clinging sheet. My flesh was its own shield: Where it was gashed, it healed. I grew as I explored The body I could trust Even whi…
Theognis of Megara.  Wings. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:21
To you I have given wings, on which you may fly aloftAbove the boundless sea and all the earthWith ease. At feasts and banquets you will be presentOn all occasions, lying in the mouths of many,And to the clear-toned soun…
Theocritus.  From Idyll I. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:51
In addition there is fashioned there an ancient fisherman and a rock, a rugged rock, on which with might and main the old man poises a great net for the cast as one who puts his whole heart into it. One would say that he…
Ted Hughes. King Of Carrion. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29
His palace is of skulls. His crown is the last splinters Of the vessel of life. His throne is the scaffold of bones, the hanged thing’s Rack and final stretcher. His robe is the black of the last blood. His kingdom is em…
Sylvia Plath.  Lady Lazarus. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:09
Lady Lazarus. By Sylvia Plath. I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fine Jew linen.Pee…
Syl Cheney-Coker.  Blood Money. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:09
Along the route of this river,with a little luck, we shall chance uponour brothers' fortune, hidden with that cold smilereserved for discreet bankers unmindful of the hydragrowing fiery mornings from our discontentWealth…
Rabindranath Tagore.  Playthings. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:42
Child, how happy you are sitting in the dust, playing with a broken twig all the morning. I smile at your play with that little bit of a broken twig. I am busy with my accounts, adding up figures by the hour. Perhaps you…
Rupert Brooke.  Day That I Have Loved. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:01
Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies. I bear you, a light burden, to the shrouded sands, Wher…
William Shakespeare.  As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:33
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking…
Robert Herrick.  To The Virgins, To Make Much Of Time. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:35
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying.The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,The higher he’s a-getting,The sooner will his race be run,And…