Skip to main content

Being Savile


As part of National Poetry Day events, The Savile Club is hosting the following...

An Evening of Poems by Ian Hamilton
08 October 2010 - Reading 7pm - 8pm followed by Dinner

In association with the University of East Anglia (UEA) and in advance of Faber’s reissues of Ian Hamilton’s backlist next year, this is a literary event not to be missed.

Please join us for an evening of Poems by Ian Hamilton, read by some of his friends, including Alan Jenkins, Hugo Williams, and Dan Jacobson.

Ian Hamilton, poet, critic and editor, was the hugely influential founder of 'The Review', Poetry and Fiction Editor of the TLS, and then started 'The New Review'.  He wrote highly respected biographies of Robert Lowell and J D Salinger, among others.  His "Collected Poems", introduced by Alan Jenkins, was published by Faber in 2009.

Chair: Professor John Carey, Merton Professor of English Literature, Oxford University.

Tickets: £10 reception drink and talk PLUS £30 (optional) dinner with wine

To make a reservation, please Tel: 020 7629 5462 Fax: 020 7499 7087 or Email: reception@savileclub.co.uk. Payment must be made at the time of booking.

Here is the venue.
Here is a map.
Here is a link to National Poetry Day events in London.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".