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
Mark Doty.   Reprive, From Atlantis. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:21
I woke in the night and thought, It was a dream, nothing has torn the future apart, we have not lived years in dread, it never happened, I dreamed it all. And then there was this sensation of terrific pressurelifting, as…
Li Bai.  Yellow Crane Terrace. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:25
Here he is, my good old friend! He's at Yellow Crane Terrace on a western departure. And--we're saying goodbye, goodbye. He's in a cloud of third-month blossoms. He's off downstream to Yang-chou. That shadow there is his…
King Solomon.  Ecclesiastes 12. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:33
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not dar…
Kalidasa.  Look To This Day. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:30
Look to this day:For it is life, the very life of life.In its brief courseLie all the verities and realities of your existence.The bliss of growth,The glory of action,The splendour of achievementAre but experiences of ti…
Keki Daruwalla.  Migrations. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:20
Migrations are always difficult: ask any drought, any plague; ask the year 1947. Ask the chronicles themselves: if there had been no migrations would there have been enoughhistory to munch on?Going back in time is also t…
Federico Garcia Lorca.  Romance Sonámbulo. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:37
Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship out on the sea and the horse on the mountain. With the shade around her waist she dreams on her balcony, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold si…
Jorge Luis Borges.  When Sorrow Lays Us Low. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:57
When sorrow lays us low for a second we are saved by humble windfalls of the mindfulness or memory: the taste of a fruit, the taste of water, that face given back to us by a dream, the first jasmine of November,the endle…
Kwesi Brew.  The Sea Eats Our Lands. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:33
Here stood our ancestral home: The crumbling wall marks the spot. Here a sheep was led to slaugther To appease the gods and atone For faults which our destiny Has blossomed into crimes. There my cursed father once stoodA…
Kofi Awoonor.  Had Death Not Had Me in Tears. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:46
Had death not had me in tears I would have seen the barges on life's stream sail. I would have heard sorrow songs in groves where the road was lost long where men foot prints mix with other men foot prints By the road I…
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  The Lady of Shalot. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:00
Part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; The yellow-leaved waterlily The green-sheathed da…