Lit2go

Lit2Go is a great free online collection of stories and poems in text and MP3 to listen to, read or download. Check it out! Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along.

• One of my favourite ones is Uncle Tom's Cabin and
• Hernando de Soto

http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/genres

Dramas from BBC Learning English

Listen and read these popular stories:

BBC Learning English - Dramas from BBC Learning English www.bbc.co.uk

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

The Race, Phil and his friends as they attempt to sail around the world in just 80 days. 

The White Elephant, serving up lots of functional English phrases as it follows the story of a brand new restaurant

Crave, English Theater

This March

 English Theatre Madrid

presents

CRAVE

by Sarah Kane

Crave is being performed in English on

 Friday 24th March at 20.00 and 21.30

Saturday 25th March at 20.00 and 21.30

Thursday 30th March at 20.00

Friday 31st March at 20.00 and 21.30

at the

Teatro/Sala Trovador

C/ San José, 3  Metro: Antón Martín

Tickets cost 12€ 

The seating capacity is just 55 seats per performance

Book early, don't be disappointed

Book now on 634 952 679 or at

https://entradium.com/entradas/crave-v-o-ingles

Fragments of memory. Shards of poetry. Scattered relics of relationships.

Sarah Kane's starkly beautiful play threads together four frayed voices into a powerful tapestry of words.

English Theatre Madrid presents a dynamic new production of Crave. The company does justice to Kane's dark lyricism, while also showing the shafts of bleak humour that break through and illuminate this dark play of the soul.

Trozos de memoria. Fragmentos de poesía. Reliquias dispersas de relaciones.

La bella y rotunda obra de Sarah Kane ensarta cuatro voces deshilachadas en un poderoso tapiz de palabras.

English Theatre Madrid presenta una nueva y dinámica producción de Crave. La compañía hace justicia al lirismo oscuro de Kane, mientras que muestra las pinceladas de humor sombrío que rompen e iluminan esta oscura obra del alma.

The world is a beautiful place

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born March 24, 1919) is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over one million copies.

This is the poem Eva chose for her presentation in class yesterday:

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Utopian

How  about  some poetry for the weekend? Which city is she talking about do you think?

Alicia Ostriker                               

My neighbor’s daughter has created a city you cannot see on an island to which you cannot swim ruled by a noble princess and her athletic consort all the buildings are glass so that lies are impossible beneath the city they have buried certain words which can never be spoken again chiefly the word divorce which is eaten by maggots when it rains you hear chimes rabbits race through its suburbs the name of the city is one you can almost pronounce

February 29th

Some poetry for today by Jane Hirshfield

An extra day—   Like the painting’s fifth cow, who looks out directly, straight toward you, from inside her black and white spots.   An extra day— Accidental, surely: the made calendar stumbling over the real as a drunk trips over a threshold too low to see.   An extra day—   With a second cup of black coffee. A friendly but businesslike phone call. A mailed-back package. Some extra work, but not too much— just one day’s worth, exactly.   An extra day—   Not unlike the space between a door and its frame when one room is lit and another is not, and one changes into the other as a woman exchanges a scarf.   An extra day—   Extraordinarily like any other. And still there is some generosity to it, like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

Forgetfulness

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem "Forgetfulness" with animation by Julian Grey of Headgear.

An Autumn Reverie by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Through all the weary, hot midsummer time,
My heart has struggled with its awful grief.
And I have waited for these autumn days,
Thinking the cooling winds would bring relief.
For I remembered how I loved them once,
When all my life was full of melody.
And I have looked and longed for their return,
Nor thought but they would seem the same, to me.

The fiery summer burned itself away,
And from the hills, the golden autumn time
Looks down and smiles. The fields are tinged with brown—
The birds are talking of another clime.
The forest trees are dyed in gorgeous hues,
And weary ones have sought an earthy tomb.
But still the pain tugs fiercely at my heart—
And still my life is wrapped in awful gloom.

The winds I thought would cool my fevered brow,
Are bleak, and dreary; and they bear no balm.
The sounds I thought would soothe my throbbing brain,
Are grating discords; and they can not calm
This inward tempest. Still it rages on.
My soul is tost upon a troubled sea,
I find no pleasure in the olden joys—
The autumn is not as it used to be.

I hear the children shouting at their play!
Their hearts are happy, and they know not pain.
To them the day brings sunlight, and no shade.
And yet I would not be a child again.
For surely as the night succeeds the day,
So surely will their mirth turn into tears.
And I would not return to happy hours,
If I must live again these weary years.

I would walk on, and leave it all behind:
will walk on; and when my feet grow sore,
The boatman waits—his sails are all unfurled—
He waits to row me to a fairer shore.
My tired limbs shall rest on beds of down,
My tears shall all be wiped by Jesus’ hand;
My soul shall know the peace it long hath sought --
A peace too wonderful to understand.

What does autumn mean for the writer?