Poetry video and audio

Elizabeth Bishop

One of the best ways to revise poetry (and of course to approach it in the first place) is by hearing the poet - or just a good reader - reading it out to you. So here is a list of poems by authors on the Leaving Certificate course for examination in 2014 (we'll add other poets for next year's course) you can listen to and/or watch. If no reader is mentioned, it is the poet him/herself.

Another audio tip:
Use your phone to record your own reading of the poem. No-one likes listening to their own voice, but do, and improve your version; this is a very good way to understand the poem, especially its rhythm and sound patterns, and will also help you learn it off by heart.

This post will be refreshed every now and then with more helpful audio, including material about the poets.


Elizabeth Bishop

• 'The Fish'
• 'The Armadillo'
• 'Sestina' read by WhyPoetryMatters

Emily Dickinson

• An audio guide from The Big Read, with readings by Mary Jo Salter

Seamus Heaney

• 'St Kevin and the Blackbird'
• 'Bogland' 
• 'The Annals Say'
• 'Postscript' (from 7:02)
• 'Mossbawn - Sunlight', 'The Undergound', 'St Kevin and the Blackbird' from Poetry Archive. 
• One for the Library or a healthy credit card: a 15-CD set of Heaney reading his Collected Poems.

Thomas Kinsella

• At the Gate Theatre

Philip Larkin

• 'Church Going'
• 'The Whitsun Weddings'
• 'MCMXIV'
• The Sunday Sessions, a CD from Faber and Faber, includes readings by the author of 'MCMXIV' (above), 'The Explosion', 'The Trees', 'Church Going', 'The Whitsun Weddings', 'At Grass' and 'An Arundel Tomb'. 
• 'The Whitsun Weddings' and 'The Trees' on Poetry Archive.
• 'An Arundel Tomb', 'Ambulances', 'At Grass' and 'The Trees' [read by 'Tom O'Bedlam']

Derek Mahon

• 'The Chinese Restaurant at Portrush'  (at 1:56)
• 'A Disused Shed in County Wexford' read by the actor Stephen Rea.

Sylvia Plath

• 'Black Rook in Rainy Weather'
• Readings from Ariel (no course poems)
• The Caedmon CD (no course poems).

W.B. Yeats

• Four poems, including 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'.
• 'Easter 1916' and 'September 1916' read by 'Tom O'Bedlam'.