For the final episode of the year, A Voice Like This presents a complete reading of

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

A seasonal favourite, Thomas’s lyrical memoir captures the sights, sounds, and small moments of a Welsh childhood at Christmas; snow-filled streets, family rituals, and voices that linger long after the season has passed.

This episode is offered simply and in full, without interruption.

A Voice Like This will return in mid-January with new episodes and new poetry.

Until then, Merry Christmas, and take care.

A Visit from St. Nicholas

As Christmas approaches, this special bonus episode invites a quiet moment of calm amid the winter bustle. Phil offers a gentle reflection on the season before reading 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', the beloved poem more commonly known as ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.

A festive pause, a breath of stillness, and a timeless story that continues to shape the magic of Christmas for generations.

Poem featured: A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore

Thank you for listening.

Wishing you a peaceful, gentle, and truly joyful Christmas.

What does it mean for love to last?

Not the rush of feeling, or the drama of declaration, but the quieter, steadier work of trust. The kind that’s built carefully, tested over time, and strong enough to stand without constant reassurance.

In this episode, we explore love as something enduring and unshaken, through two poems that speak across centuries.

Seamus Heaney’s Scaffolding offers a grounded, human image of commitment; practical, patient, and earned. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 follows, affirming love as a constant force: unchanged by time, untouched by circumstance, and steadfast in the face of all that seeks to alter it.

Together, these poems remind us that the strongest bonds are often the quietest - built with care, and trusted to hold.

Poems featured:

• Scaffolding – Seamus Heaney
• Sonnet 116 – William Shakespeare

Featuring “I Dream a World” by Langston Hughes and “The Human Family” by Maya Angelou

In this uplifting episode of A Voice Like This, we explore two poems that imagine a gentler world and celebrate the ties that bind us together.

Langston Hughes dreams of a future shaped by justice, kindness, and shared humanity.

Maya Angelou reminds us that in all our differences, we are still deeply alike.

Together, these poems offer a hopeful vision - a reminder that peace and love are not distant ideals, but possibilities that begin with us.

Poems featured:

• "I Dream a World" by Langston Hughes
• "The Human Family" by Maya Angelou

Available wherever you get your podcast

In this deeply personal episode, we pause to reflect on the quiet power of a life well lived — and the everyday moments that shape who we become.

At the request of my niece Joanne, and in loving memory of my sister Tracy, I read The Dash — a poem that reminds us how profoundly the small choices of our days define the legacy we leave behind.

To accompany it, I share Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day, a poem full of wonder, stillness, and gentle curiosity. Oliver invites us to slow down, to notice beauty in the ordinary… and to choose, with intention, how we spend the time we’re given.

Together, these poems form a meditation on gratitude:

gratitude for each breath, for each moment of kindness, for each connection that shapes us, and for the lives that leave an imprint long after they’re gone.

Poems featured:

“Dust of Snow” by Robert Frost

“The Orange” by Wendy Cope

“The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski

In this lighter, brighter episode of A Voice Like This, we turn our attention to the small joys -the sparks, glimmers, and brief flashes of warmth that can shift an entire day.

Robert Frost offers a tiny moment of unexpected wonder.

Wendy Cope celebrates the quiet delight found in something as simple as an orange.

And Charles Bukowski closes with a call to embrace your own life and keep the light within you burning.

Together, these poems remind us that joy isn’t always grand or dramatic. Sometimes it’s soft, sometimes it’s ordinary -but it’s always worth noticing.

This episode marks a time of remembrance.

We pause to honour those who gave their lives in war — and to reflect on the truth that lies behind the words honour and glory.

John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” has become almost inseparable from remembrance itself — a poem of beauty and resolve, written in the shadow of the Great War.

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” answers that call with the voice of experience, stripped of illusion, confronting the human cost behind the patriotic ideal.

Together, these two poems remind us that remembrance is not only about pride, but about understanding.

The silence we keep each November is more than an act of memory — it is an act of truth.

As autumn deepens and the light fades earlier each day, we begin to measure time in quieter ways. Light & Time brings together two voices - Shakespeare and Vaughan - who, across centuries, reflect on what it means to age, and what lies beyond the boundaries of time itself.

In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare offers one of the most intimate meditations on aging ever written - not in fear, but with acceptance. He imagines himself as a fading fire, a tree stripped of its leaves, a twilight sky at rest. Yet from that awareness grows something stronger: love deepened by the knowledge of its fragility.

Henry Vaughan’s The World, written a generation later, lifts that same reflection into the cosmic. He sees eternity as a “great ring of pure and endless light,” with human life - its passions, wealth, and worry - whirling beneath it like shadows.

Where Shakespeare finds meaning in mortality, Vaughan finds it in what never dies.

Together, they remind us that the light within and the light beyond are not so different - both glimpsed most clearly when the world grows still.