For the 2021 Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics Prize, we are building a list of resources (online and more old school) for poets, essayists, students and teachers. These links to websites, articles, videos, podcasts, images and books have often helped our own research into anything Keats-Shelleyean. We will update the page over the coming months, and also begin to compile similar links to the Shelleys, Byron and Romanticism in general.
We would love to hear from teachers, lecturers, students and anyone with any suggestions, please email: ksmafriends@hotmail.com.
We begin with the 2021 Prize.
2021 Keats-Shelley Prize Theme:
Writ in Water
General Information
The trailer for 2021’s Keats-Shelley Prizes was an attempt to answer the question: can you write in water?
Giuseppe Albano, the Keats-Shelley House curator, introduces 2021’s Prize theme from beside Keats’ grave.
Visit the Keats-Shelley Blog for Keats-Shelley Prize Inspiration: weekly water-themed poems and music playlists to help inspire entrants to both competitions.
It is well worth visiting the website of Rome’s Non-Catholic Cemetery, where you can find the graves of both Keats and Shelley.
Articles
Giuseppe Albano has also written an excellent piece, The Last Days of John Keats, on the excellent Wordsworth Blog.
Nicholas Stanley-Price is an authority on the Non-Catholic Cemetery. Read his article on Keats and Shelley’s graves, also at the Wordsworth Blog.
The Paris Review Blog published a fascinating article on Keats’ grave, also entitled ‘Writ in Water’, by Michelle Stacey.
John Keats’ Final Voyage, produced by James Kidd of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, retraces the poet’s anguished journey from London to Rome in the autumn and winter of 1820. We used Google Earth, which not only allowed us to map Keats’ progress by land and sea, but to narrate it with text, image and video. The project is a work-in-progress, and is being updated, proofed and added to as we speak. There are links to resources outside the map, and also sub-plots buried within it.
Audio and Video
The Keats-Shelley Prize Podcast is posting a series inspired by 2021’s theme ‘Writ in Water’. The latest episode features Dr Dinah Roe of Oxford Brookes University discussing the influence of John Keats on Christina Rossetti, her brother the painter-poet Dante Gabriel and the Pre-Raphaelites. Dinah reads and explores Christina’s sonnnet ‘On Keats’, which quotes his epitaph ‘Writ in Water’.
In a previous episode Professor Adam Smyth of Balliol College Oxford examines John Keats’ epitaph as a ‘Material Text.’ As well as explaining what exactly a Material Text might be, Adam explores poems by John Donne, Thomas Hardy and Abraham Cowley’s valentine in invisible ink. Host James Kidd chips in with a Keats letter and a little William Blake. Listen below.
In 1982, there was an extraordinarily detailed documentary series exploring Romanticism both British and European. You can’t imagine anything like it being commissioned today. Narrated by Anthony Andrews, each episode begins in Keats House. Watch the episode ‘The Triumph of Death’ via Internet Archive.
Listen below to part one of a two-part podcast, entitled ‘Writ in Water’ handily enough, presented by James Kidd of the Keats-Shelley Podcast. This episode was recorded in 2014 during a visit to John Keats’ grave in the Non-Catholic Cemetery. Listen to part two at the Keats-Shelley Podcast website.
Listen to a Keats-Shelley Podcast that marked the bicenteanary of John Keats’ arrival in Italy on 31st October 1820 - which also happened to be his 25th birthday. We address the question: what does Keats’ death in Italy mean to us 200 years later?
Writing Advice and Inspiration
The bestselling novelist Erica Jong spoke to the Keats-Shelley Podcast late in 2020. During the conversation we asked what advice she would offer to our Young Romantics. Listen below.
There are two useful writing guides on the Keats-Shelley Blog. We will add more over the coming weeks.
Will Kemp, winner of the Keats-Shelley Poetry Prize and current Prize Judge, offers his guide to writing poetry.
Matthew Sweeney, admired poet and a long-time Poetry Judge for the Keats-Shelley Prize, offers his own Advice to Young Romantics.
Keats-Shelley Resources
Both the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association and Keats-Shelley House are creating our own digital resources.
Explore the Keats-Shelley House’s collections at our online archive.
John Keats’ Final Voyage retraces the poet’s anguished journey from London to Rome in the autumn and winter of 1820. We used Google Earth, not only to map his progress, but to narrate it with text, image and video. The project is a work-in-progress, and is being updated, proofed and added to as we speak. There are links to resources outside the map, and also sub-plots buried within it.
We have begun another Google Earth project: The Life, Times and Places of John Keats, which maps major events in his life.
Visit the Keats-Shelley Podcast for readings, poetry analysis, interviews and some short audio documentaries.
Belowin,watch acclaimed actor Julian Sands, who portrayed Shelley in Ken Russell’s Gothic, give a bravura reading of poems by Keats, Shelley and Byron live and in lockdown at Keats-Shelley House.
General Romanticism Links
John Keats
Keats-Shelley Association of America
The Keats Letters Project - an amazing resource dedicated to Keats’ correspondence
Romanticism
British Association of Romantic Studies
The Wordsworth Blog is lively, informative and has a wealth of information.
Audio and Video
Watch the entire ‘The Romantic Spirit’ documentary series (presented by Anthony Andrews) via Internet Archive.
Watch all episodes of The Romantics presented by Peter Ackroyd on the BBC:
John Keats: Poetry
Online Texts
John Keats at the Poetry Foundation.
John Keats at the Academy of American Poets.
Audio and Video
Julian Sands reads ‘Happy is England’, on the occasion of the 111th birthday of the Keats-Shelley House.
Ian McKellen, playing Keats for BBC television, reads ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ via the BBC website.
Reeta Chakrabarti reads ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ for KS200.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci read by Edith Evans.
Tom Hiddleston, playing Tom Hiddleston, reads ‘Bright Star’.
Although he has never played Loki, James Kidd of the Keats-Shelley Podcast reads Bright Star by heart and offers a close reading.
Keats’ Odes
Ode on Indolence read by Matthew Coulton at Keats House Hampstead
Ode to a Nightingale read by Benedict Cumberbatch.
Ode on a Grecian Urn read by Helen Hayes.
Ode on Melancholy read by Ralph Richardson.
To Autumn read by Ben Whishaw. Listen below.
Ode to Psyche read by Matthew Coulton at Keats House Hampstead.
Ode to a Nightingale by F Scott ‘Tender is the Night’ Fitzgerald. Listen below.
The Life of John Keats
Websites
You can visit our work-in-progress Google Earth project, The Life, Times and Places of John Keats.
There are two brilliant websites with different but extraordinarily detailed accounts of John Keats’ life.
Kim Blank’s Mapping Keats’ Progress
The John Keats page at English History is an excellent resource for letters, poems and manuscripts.
The John Keats page at the Victorian Web
Images
The excellent John Keats page at the National Portrait Gallery
Keats biographer Nicholas Roe has an excellent page of photographs at his website.
English History also had a handy page of Keats images
Audio and Video
A short, abridged 1973 documentary about Keats’ life and death, narrated by James Mason and produced by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Watch below.
‘The strangely encouraging life of John Keats’: an informative summary of Keats’ life and works by John Webster.
This is amazing. MC Lars and Mega Ran’s Ode on a Grecian Urn: the hip hop story of Keats’ 25 years in 2.14 seconds.