POETRY SPECTACULAR IN WANTAGE SUNDAY OCTOBER 20th

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Cathy Dreyer — Leave a comment

Yes!

It’s that time of year again – the Wantage Literary Festival is bringing you another glorious Sunday afternoon and evening of Poetry (with a capital P).

Jenny Lewis, Fiona Sampson, Peter Wyton and Robin Gilbert will all be reading their work.

Please book now on the link below as last year some events sold out.

I took the following text from the website:

“Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq”

Jenny will discuss her exploration of her father’s role as a soldier in the South Wales Borderers in Iraq (Mesopotamia) in WW1 and read from her new pamphlet, Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq

Arising from a series of readings and workshops at the Ashmolean Museum in April 2013 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2003 UK/ US invasion of Iraq, Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq celebrates the history and culture of ancient Mesopotamia and modern Iraq as well as denouncing the devastation of wars ancient, historic and contemporary. Each of the poems, by British poet Jenny Lewis and Iraqi poet Adnan al Sayegh, appears in both English and Arabic.

Fiona Sampson (Professor of Poetry at the University of Roehampton) reads from her new collection, Coleshill, and talks about a special kind of “writing home”.

Peter Wyton, former Poet Laureate of Gloucestershire, and Cheltenham Poetry Festival co-Director Robin Gilbert come together to celebrate the joys of history in verse. From the god Apollo to Ivor Gurney, from the Creation to the 1950s, from Saxon Gloucestershire to 19th century New Zealand, from the comical to the poignant, they offer a feast of poems commemorating deities, people, artefacts and places throughout the ages.Join them for a rumbustious progress down countless millenia! You’ll go home much the wiser about our planet’s amazing and sometimes perilous past.

In the evening there’s a slam and somewhere in this rich mixture, there’s also a chance to see yours truly strutting her versal stuff. For five minutes in the local poets and enthusiasts slot …

Here’s a link to the events and listings page:

http://www.wantagebetjeman.com/store/

It is going to be worth any amount of effort to see these accomplished poets share their human beingness with us.

Please book now. Last year some slots were sold out.

The venue, the Vale and Downlands Museum, is at Church Street, Wantage OX12 8BL.