Audiobook · read by volunteers
Garden Fairies
Philip Bourke Marston (1850–1887)
Read by Caitlin Teresa, Clarica, Dario Cruz, Jc Guan, Katie Gibboney, Lee Ann Howlett, Mark F. Smith, stepheeanna, Sean McGaughey, Tuo · 12 chapters · 40 min
About the book
Philip Bourke Marston’s “Garden Fairies” takes its title from an old and charming idea, that the flowers and leaves of a garden are home to small, unseen creatures. It is a short poem, and in this recording it is heard twelve times: twelve separate recordings by LibriVox volunteers, each with its own voice, pace and feeling. Hearing the same lines in sequence lets you follow how a poem changes shape in different mouths, and you may notice small details that a single reading would hide. Marston was a Victorian poet whose verse is tender and musical, which makes his short poems well suited to being heard aloud. You can listen to the whole sequence in one sitting or sample a version or two. The collection lasts a little over forty minutes, so it makes a gentle listening break at any time of day.
Introduction
Philip Bourke Marston, born in London in 1850 and died in 1887, was an English poet who was blind from childhood. He was surrounded by writers from an early age: his father was the dramatist John Westland Marston, and the household received many visitors from literary circles, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne. Marston’s poetry is often tender and sorrowful, and it was admired for its musical quality.
Garden Fairies belongs to a tradition in Victorian verse that imagined the natural world full of tiny, hidden beings. The theme was widely popular in the nineteenth century, in poems, paintings and children’s books alike. Marston’s poem belongs to this tradition. The poem is short and can be read in a few minutes, which makes it ideal for comparison between different readers.
This collection comes from a weekly poetry project at LibriVox, in which volunteers record the same short poem and the results are gathered together. There are twelve readings in this edition, and the total running time is just over forty minutes. If you enjoy poetry read aloud, it is fascinating to compare how each reader decides on pace, emphasis and tone. A short, pleasant listen, it also offers a small introduction to a poet who is not often heard today.
Because the poem is so short, it is easy to treat this collection as a game: listen to two or three versions in a row and note what changes. A change of pace may alter the mood completely, and a single pause can give a line a different meaning. It is a lesson in how a poem lives in the voice.
Public domain
Philip Bourke Marston died in 1887: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text