This event involves a performance of Deryn Rees-Jones’s new poem by actress Juliet Stevenson accompanied by the exquisite animated collages of artist Charlotte Hodes, in collaboration with Kristina Pulejkova. This event involves a discussion on the historical context and sources that inspired the poem and all the artists will reflect on the collaborative process. And…
Five Years of Winners Hosted by our Young Poet in Residence, Dom Hale The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is the key award for young poets aged 11-17. Over 7,000 poets submitted to the 2013 competition, from a total of 75 countries worldwide, drawing entries from Belgium to Barbados and Vietnam to Venezuela….
Clare Short was MP for Birmingham Ladywood for 27 years and Secretary of State for International Development. In 2003, Clare resigned from the government over the Iraq war and later published An Honourable Deception? She is now active in various organisations working on slum upgrading in the developing world, transparency in oil, gas and mining,…
This special event celebrates the publication of My Voice: A Decade of Poems from the Poetry Translation Centre, a dazzling array of 111 poems translated from 23 different languages – from Arabic to Zapotec – by 45 of the world’s leading poets, edited by PTC Director, the acclaimed poet, Sarah Maguire. Sarah will be joined…
Exploring representations of homosexuality or the homoerotic in poetry. Gregory Woods is author of A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition. He was the first Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies in the UK. He is joined by poets Kei Miller from Jamaica, Chris Beckett brought up in Ethiopia and Rachel Mann, an Anglican priest…
Robert Perkins delivers a talk about creating the Written Image, an exceptional body of visual work on show at The Heritage Centre and Shell House Gallery. He talks about the poets he has worked with including John Ashbery, Frank Bidart, Basil Bunting, Henri Cole, Seamus Heaney, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, and Octavio Paz.
Elizabeth Bishop is now widely accepted as ‘one of the most important American poets’ of the twentieth century (New York Times). Her poems are renowned for their precision and beauty. Juliet Stevenson reads Elizabeth Bishop with Mark Fisher giving the narrative.
Renowned as a supreme performer, Kei Miller’s poems inhabit sound, and his speaking voice brings to life beautifully the warm music of the Jamaican English of his homeland. His new collection is The Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion. Chris Beckett grew up in 1960s Ethiopia, a country he describes as a ‘barefoot…
Jo Gill, Associate Professor of 20th Century Literature at Exeter University, argues that even though post-war American suburbia was widely regarded to be a cultureless wasteland, its rituals and topographies provided an unexpectedly fertile resource for mid-century poets as evidenced in a group of fine suburban pastorals, elegies and sonnets. The poets discussed range from…
with Juliet Stevenson and Michael Pennington Since the start of World War 1 in 1914 humanity has been caught up in war after war. In this deeply moving event Michael Pennington and Juliet Stevenson perform poems by poets writing as combatants on opposite sides, or as victims or anguished witnesses to wars between nations, tribes…
Join Ian McMillan for a combination of words and stories and glee and delight. Ian McMillan is Poet in Residence for The Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC. He presents The Verb every week on BBC R3 and he’s a regular on Coast, Pick of the Week, You & Yours, Last Word and The Arts…
Jacqueline Saphra, Rachel Piercey, Richard O’Brien and Jerrold Yam celebrate the diversity and eccentricity of human sexuality, peeling back the glamour to reveal eroticism in all its messy, sexy glory. We see lovers imagined as heroes and hares, meeting at swimming pools, sinking into baths, worrying about lost knickers and caravans. Hosted by Emma Wright…
Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, were life-long friends and this biography reflects themes including fathers and daughters, love and friendship and the legacy of genius and fame. ‘Never has the cost of being a daughter of Romanticism been shown with more sympathy and imagination.’ (Literary Review)
What happens when you give five poets each an anonymous bottle of perfume to try, and ask them to write a new poem in response to that scent? And what happens when you give some perfumiers a poem, and ask them to compost a fragrance off the back of it? Penning Perfumes, an exchange between…
For anyone who writes poetry and anyone who’s interested in how and why poetry is written, or anyone who’s interested in what poetry is: ‘On Poetry is the best book about poetry I’ve ever read; certainly the only one that’s made me laugh out loud.’ (Guardian)
Sound recordist Chris Watson and poet Linda France recreate a special live version of their 2008 collaboration The Moon & Flowers – a lunar year in a walled garden. They also première a new live piece, Stone Meadow, evoking the passage of the seasons in a wilder patch of Northumberland through the synergy of natural…
Ali Cobby Eckermann is firmly established as a strong and vital emotive voice within Australian Aboriginal literature and she is one of the most remarkable poets to emerge in Australian poetry since the 1970s. One of The Stolen Generations, Ali chooses to live in the “intervention-free” village of Koolunga, South Australia, where she is renovating…
