by The Shepheardes Calender Podcast
A journey through the year with Edmund Spenser's poetic shepheards, and some real ones. Sponsored by the International Spenser Society. Listen on substack or: https://open.spotify.com/show/7bn8CejdOfIGqDXUn8kLjn https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/occasion-of-the-season/id1755609916 https://pca.st/ti30si7b <br/><br/><a href="https://occasionoftheseason.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">occasionoftheseason.substack.com</a>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
5/29/2024
See how your podcast performs across key metrics
Recommendations available
Unlock the full report to see detailed tips
Recommendations available
Unlock the full report to see detailed tips
Unlock comprehensive insights including:
See how your show performs across every key metric
High authority scores make your podcast more attractive to industry leaders and influencers who want to appear on credible shows.
Sponsors look for podcasts with proven authority and engagement. Your score demonstrates your podcast's value to potential partners.
Understanding your strengths and weaknesses helps you make data-driven decisions to expand your listener base effectively.
Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.
April 28, 2025
<p>This month I met with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gallatin.nyu.edu/people/faculty/slw13.html">Susanne Wofford,</a> professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, to talk through the April eclogue. We travelled through a myriad of classical and mythological echoes, and at least one epiphany, to the culminating question of this project: how do we think about the relation between pastoral and epic? Susanne’s answer is excitingly different from the one you may expect. This is the final episode of the podcast as I’ve recorded them, and since it is to Susanne above all that I owe my fascination with The Shepheardes Calender, and my sense of its innumerable possibilities as a site of conversation, there could be no more fitting way to end it. It is also, delightfully, not the end, since the moment I press ‘publish’ we have achieved the circularity that Spenser deploys so cannily in his calender.</p><p>One of my companions in an idyllic graduate seminar called ‘The Ethics of Pastoral’, taught in 2015 by Professors Susanne Wofford and Jane Tylus, was Dr Tanya Schmidt-Morstein, who went on, like me, to take Susanne’s class on The Faerie Queene, and to complete her PhD under Susanne’s supervision. Reunited by the Boston conferences, Tanya and I decided to go on an adventure to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/collection/10867">Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum</a>, one of the most famous art collections in the U.S. Here we found two paintings of Isabella herself, which caused us to reflect on another presiding theme of the April eclogue: female power and its pictorial, and perhaps pastoral, representation.</p><p>Since it isn’t too long, this episode opens with a recording of the entire April eclogue, read by me and Susanne. In the conversation that follows we often refer to Spenser’s epic-romance poem, The Faerie Queene. I apologise if any of these references are mysterious. Here is a link to the part of the poem that we talked about the most—<a target="_blank" href="https://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/queene6.html#Cant.%20X.">Book VI, Canto x</a>—known as ‘the dance of the Graces on Mount Acidale’. I hope that you may be inspired to read Spenser’s epic-romance next, if you haven’t already.</p><p>At the beginning of May 2024, the month in which I started this project, I was at <a target="_blank" href="https://research.tuni.fi/plural-en/event/marathon-reading-of-and-conference-on-edmund-spensers-the-faerie-queene/">Tampere University</a> in Finland, where a group of around 40 of us read the entire of Spenser’s Faerie Queene aloud over the course of three long days. On April 5th 2025, this month, Verity Spott and I, acting as the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.hollingdeanwednesdays.com/paradise-lost-marathon-reading/">Hollingdean Poetry Group</a>, organised a marathon reading of the whole of John Milton’s Paradise Lost in the Hollingdean Community Center, at the top of a hill overlooking the downs in East Brighton. There was laughter, and shaking of heads, and, thanks to Anna and Katya Schwarz, amazing food. This podcast has stretched between the two events, so it feels like a continuation of the impulse to gather in poetry, to experience the mutual excitement, thoughtfulness, mystery, frustration and companionship of that gathering. </p><p>Have no doubt that other occasions will be found, and stay subscribed to find out what they will be! It remains for me to thank the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.spensersociety.org/">International Spenser Society</a> and the huge group of people—interlocutors, collaborators, listeners—who have made this podcast possible. </p><p>And thank you to Tanya Schmidt-Morstein for adventuring with me, to Susanne Wofford for leading the dance, to artist <a target="_blank" href="https://www.artistsathome.co.uk/artist/65/noonie-minogue">Noonie Minogue</a> for interpreting the woodcut, to N.<strong>L.</strong> Chaundler (I can’t fathom why I swapped your ‘L’ for an ‘H’ in this episode) for accompanying us all this way with mesmerising poetic reflections, to Ella Mahony for designing the wonderful goat picture, and to Femi Oriogun-Williams for mixing and mastering so many episodes, as well as creating the theme music.</p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://occasionoftheseason.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">occasionoftheseason.substack.com</a>
March 27, 2025
<p>The first of two bumper spring-specials. Buckle up for the season of increasing abundance! This month <a target="_blank" href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/centrestaff/cornish/">Archie Cornish</a> and I sat in the boot of my Citroen Berlingo in Ashdown Forest and talked through the March eclogue, to the puzzlement of passing dog-walkers. Archie’s reading of the poem emphasises the value of pastoral attention, the Greek roots of this poem, why Elizabethans were obsessed with bird-catching, and the importance of getting tangled up in nets. Read more of his thoughtfulness <a target="_blank" href="https://nightthoughtsac.substack.com/">here</a>! </p><p>I also had the huge pleasure of talking to Jill, Jon and John, the current senior members of the legendary <a target="_blank" href="https://www.thecopperfamily.com/">Copper family</a> of Sussex. Husband and wife team Jon and Jill open this episode with a snippet of the venerable old song, ‘Shepherd of the Downs’. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rewx0tzvdKQ">Here is some archival footage of a much earlier </a>recording. The three of them were incredibly gracious and kind to let me turn up in their kitchen and ask them questions about what it is like to have inherited–and spread around the world–the vast folk song collection that their father (in-law), Bob Copper, had himself inherited from his father, Jim, and his father, James, before him. </p><p>Finally, the episode is tied together by the voices of members of the <a target="_blank" href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/4BSjlnV6ZYrkMLPm55Wrfm">Deep Throat Choir </a>collective, who gathered into a kitchen on a March Sunday to sing for two members who are due to give birth very soon. They will sing us out to the words of a Cherokee proverb: “when you were born you cried, and the world rejoiced; live your life so that when you die the world cries, and you rejoice”. </p><p>Thank you to the Copper family – especially Jill, John and Jon – for their generosity and brilliance at telling humorous anecdotes, and the inspiring work that they have done to keep folk music alive. Thank you to Archie for a fascinating conversation. Thank you to the members of the Deep Throat collective for sharing their voices, to Mary and Michael for describing the woodcut, to Joseph Minden for being Thomalin, to NH Chaundler for our latest instalment of poetic responses to the calendar, to Ella Mahony for the art, and to <a target="_blank" href="http://Femi Oriogun-Williams">Femi Oriogun-Williams</a> for mixing, mastering and the original theme music.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://occasionoftheseason.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">occasionoftheseason.substack.com</a>
February 20, 2025
<p>This month I talked with <a target="_blank" href="https://fass.open.ac.uk/people/rdb29">Richard Danson Brown</a>, professor of English at the Open University. He illuminated the significance of complaint for the February eclogue, guided me through its anarchic rhythms, and made a spirited defence of Cuddie, the feisty young herdsman to Thenot’s sententious shepherd. I had the pleasure of reading this eclogue with Professor Valerie Minogue, who is also my grandmother, and an even more senior shepherd than Thenot. You’ll also hear a snippet of the long conversation we had after reading the poem.</p><p>Thank you to Ruth and Jason for describing the woodcut, to Richard Danson Brown for opening out the poem in so many great directions. Thank you to Valerie Minogue for giving voice to Thenot with the usual verve. Thank you to N.H. Chaundler for the tenth poetic response to the poem from rural Scotland. Thank you to the International Spenser Society for sponsoring this podcast, to Ella Mahony for the art, and to Femi Oriogun-Williams for making it sound great with mastering (and when it doesn’t sound great, that is because Femi’s been away and I have taken matters into my own hands).</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://occasionoftheseason.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">occasionoftheseason.substack.com</a>
Guests from recent episodes — sign up to see every guest that has ever appeared on this show.
Joseph Minden
Guest
Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
A journey through the year with Edmund Spenser's poetic shepheards, and some real ones. Sponsored by the International Spenser Society.
Listen on substack or: https://open.spotify.com/show/7bn8CejdOfIGqDXUn8kLjn https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/occasion-of-the-season/id1755609916 https://pca.st/ti30si7b <br/><br/><a href="https://occasionoftheseason.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">occasionoftheseason.substack.com</a>
This podcast updates bi-weekly.
This podcast is available on 7 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.
All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.
We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.
By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.