Harsent & Stevenson 12 July

Venue: Lauderdale House, Waterlow Park, Highgate Hill, London N6 5HG

Ph: 020-8348 8716

Time: 8pm; Tickets £5.00 (Concessions: £3.00)

12 July 2012: David Harsent, Anne Stevenson

David Harsent has published ten volumes of poetry. Legion, won the Forward Prize for best collection 2005 and was shortlisted for both the Whitbread Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His Selected Poems, published in June 2007, was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. A new collection—Night—was published in January 2011. It is the Poetry Book Society Choice for the Spring, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Award. He is currently working on English versions of poems by Yannis Ritsos. Harsent’s collaborations with composers, most often with Harrison Birtwistle, have been performed widely. He is Visiting Professor at Hallam University, Sheffield and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Anne Stevenson, born in England of American parents, grew up in the

United States

. Her many books of poems include Correspondences (1974), The Fiction-Makers (1985), Stone Milk (Bloodaxe, 2007), and Poems 1955–2005 (Bloodaxe, 2006). She is also the author of Bitter Fame, A Life of Sylvia Plath (Penguin, 1990), and of Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop (Bloodaxe, 2006). In 2002, she was the inaugural recipient of

Britain

’s Northern Rock Writers Award. Other prizes include The Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation of America, the Lannan Life Achievement Award (2007) and the Aiken Taylor Award (2007) from the University of the South. Her Selected Poems, with an introduction by Andrew Motion, was published as part of the American Poets Project by The Library of America in 2008.

Comments

Poetry Pleases! said…

Dear Todd

Anne Stevenson used to be a friend of my father's and was a regular visitor to our family home during the 1970s.

Best wishes from Simon

Sat Jul 07, 11:24:00 am 2012

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....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"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...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Search This Blog