weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
This vocabulary post is primarily intended for English language learners at B1 level (pre-intermediate). Do you like drinking tea? What's your favourite blend? Do you put any sugar or milk in it? To help you talk about tea in English, in this post I’m going to present some key vocabulary that you can use. MAKING …
As of 2019, May 21 is observed as the International Tea Day. Joining the observances, in this post we’ll be reading Edmund Waller’s short poem in praise of this wonderful drink with such a rich history. Edmund Waller (1606–1687) was an English politician and poet, very popular during his lifetime but now considered one of …
Looking for some peace and quiet? Robert Frost’s poem ‘A Prayer in Spring’ just might give you some inspiration. As I often mention in my poetry posts, try to read this poem out loud—it has a great rhythm that you might completely miss out on if you read it silently. And that would be unfortunate, …
In response to a recent question from several of my students, here’s a grammar post about two confusing verbs: lie and lay. (Actually, it’s three verbs, but we’ll come to that later.) TO LAY ‘To lay’ means to put something down. It is followed by a direct object, i.e. it’s a transitive verb—after it we …
In this post we’ll travel to the time of the English Renaissance, with a jolly little music piece written by Thomas Morley. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, Morley (1557–1602) was a true Renaissance figure: a composer, organist, music theorist… It was largely thanks to him that the Italian madrigals became so popular in England, adding …
Continue reading "‘Now Is the Month of Maying’ by Thomas Morley"
The poem presented in this post is titled ‘In April’. Written by the celebrated Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), it was first published in 1902, in the collection of poems The Book of Images (orig. Das Buch der Bilder). Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke was known and is still much appreciated for his way with …
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was one of the most important American poets of the 20th century: a modernist of the imagist kind, he was known for using simple and colloquial language to express his ideas—a feature many critics now consider typical of modern American poetry. This can be contrasted with the modernists such as T. …
Continue reading "‘Spring Storm’ by William Carlos Williams"
Whitman’s poem featured in this post is a very short one, originally published in the Herald newspaper on 12th March 1888. It just so happened that immediately after its publication, a major blizzard hit the state of New York, which made the poet’s timing rather unfortunate, and the subject of many jokes. It reminded me …
Robert Seymour Bridges was a British poet and the Poet Laureate of the UK from 1913 to 1930. Originally a doctor, he had to abandon his medical practice due to poor health. He spent most of his life in rural Berkshire near Oxford, dedicated to writing and literary studies. Robert S. Bridges (1844–1930) The poem …
Continue reading "‘So sweet love seemed that April morn’ by Robert Bridges"
A portmanteau (click here for pronunciation) is an old-fashioned type of luggage—a large travelling bag typically made of leather, opening into two equal parts. Thanks to the writer Lewis Caroll, the term has come to refer to a curious feature of language, where elements of two or more words are combined to create a new …
grammaticus 