What’s On

Ben Okri: Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading

Posted on by rebecca.kosick
The Bristol Poetry Institute, in coordination with the Centre for Black Humanities at the University of Bristol, is delighted to announce that the 2024-2025 Annual Reading will be delivered by Sir Ben Okri. The event will consist of a one hour reading followed by a half -hour book signing. The event is free but booking is essential.

 

1 November
6pm
Great Hall, Wills Memorial Building

 

 

Ben Okri is the Nigerian-born poet, cultural activist, and author of thirteen novels, including the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, the first in a trilogy, and Astonishing the Gods, which was selected as one of the BBC’s ‘100 novels that shaped our world’, as well as collections of poetry, short stories, plays and essays. His work has been translated into more than 27 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won numerous international prizes. His poem following the Grenfell Tower tragedy was widely viewed on television and on social media. He was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was awarded an OBE in 2001 and a Knighthood in 2023.

 
This event is brought to you with support from the Department of English and the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bristol. For access requirements and queries, contact: poetry-institute@bristol.ac.uk.

Talking Translation with Katherine Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

The Bristol Poetry Institute, in coordination with Bristol HiPLA and the Caribbean Studies Studio, is pleased to host Víctor Rodríguez Núñez and Katherine Hedeen for an interactive afternoon discussion of translation and poetry.

Talking Translation with Katherine Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

Thursday 31 October

3-4 PM

University of Bristol, Physics Building 3.27

Book your free place here

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez is one of Cuba’s most outstanding and celebrated contemporary writers, with over seventy collections of his poetry published throughout the world. He has been the recipient of major awards all over the Spanish-speaking region, including the Loewe Foundation Prize in 2015. His selected poems have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Macedonian, Serbian, Swedish, and Vietnamese. His work has developed an enthusiastic readership in the US and the UK, where he has published eight book-length translations, including thaw/deshielos (Arc, 2013), from a red barn (co im press, 2020) and rebel matter. poems 2002-20212 (Shearsman, 2022).

Katherine M. Hedeen is a prize-winning translator of poetry and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region into English, including Jorge Enrique Adoum, Antonio Gamoneda, Fina García Marruz and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez. She is the co-editor, with Welsh poet Zoë Skoulding, of the groundbreaking transatlantic translation anthology, Poetry’s Geographies (Shearsman, 2022).

Later the same evening, please join us for a reading and launch of their new book, despegue/departure at East Bristol Books.

 

Lunch Poems

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

 

Join the Bristol Poetry Institute to celebrate the 60th anniversary of US poet Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, purportedly written during the poet’s lunch break from his job at the Museum of Modern Art. We will gather together to read the book aloud over our own sack lunches. All welcome!

Lunch with Lunch Poems

Thursday 9 May

1-2 PM

Royal Fort Gardens (near the mirrors), Bristol BS8 1UH

Rain location: PHYS BLDG 3.34

 

April events in collaboration with the Bristol Poetry Institute

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Caribbean Nights: Poetry

Date: Thursday 18th April
Venue: Watershed (Cinema 3)
Time: 20:00- 22:00 (please note: this was previously listed as a 19:30 start)

Tickets: £8.50/5
Come and watch Caribbean Nights: Poetry which, even now, feels fresh in its insights. Afterwards, poet and editor Rishi Dastidar, 2023 TS Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph and Louisa Adjoa Parker will talk to noted Bristol academic Madhu Krishnan about the vital need for diverse poetry in our everyday lives, before Helen Thomas reads a new poem inspired by the film.

Book Launch: Secret Poetics (no event link, just turn up)

Date: Thursday 18th April
Venue: Old Council Chamber, Wills Memorial Building
Time: 18:00-19:00
Rebecca Kosick will be reading from and talking about her new book, Secret Poetics. The first English-language translation of the “secret” poetry of Hélio Oiticica uncovers a crucial chapter in the development of one of Brazil’s most significant twentieth-century artists.

Page Against the Machine: Poetry and AI

Date: Saturday 20th April
Venue: Watershed (W3)
Time: 16:30 – 17:30pm
Tickets: Free
Come along to this fascinating and interactive panel and performance at Watershed to confront the key ethical, creative and human dilemmas of the future of poetry and art with the development of AI. A collaboration with the Brigstow Institute.

Announcing the 2023-2024 Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

We are delighted to announce that this year’s Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading by Don Paterson will take place on 7 February 2024 at 6PM in the Wills Memorial Building Great Hall. 

Book your free ticket here.

The Bristol Poetry Institute, with the support of the Department of English and the School of Modern Languages, are very pleased to present Don Paterson as this year’s annual reader. The event will last one hour and comprise of a poetry reading. A 30-minute book signing with the poet will follow the reading.

Don Paterson is the author of numerous works of poetry and non-fiction; his writing has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, all three Forward Prizes, and the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2009; he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and for many years taught at the University of St Andrews, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Poetry in the School of English. From 1997 to 2022, Paterson was poetry editor at Picador. For most of his life he has also worked as a jazz musician and composer. He lives in Kirriemuir, Scotland.

The Many Lives of a Snake Goddess: New Poems by Ruth Padel

Posted on by rebecca.kosick
Votary (photograph by Professor Nico Momigliano)

Award-winning poet Ruth Padel will read her new poems inspired by the ‘Snake Goddess’ figurines found at Knossos (Crete) over a century ago. This event is part of the collaborative, international project ‘The Many Lives of a Snake Goddess‘ and is organised in collaboration with the IGRCT.

The Peel Lecture Theatre, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, BS8 1SS

Thu 16 Nov 2023 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

book your place here

Please join us downstairs in the Hepple Room for a free wine reception after the event.

If you are unable to join us in-person, you can register to watch online (you do not need to book a place via TicketTailor)

The Poetry of Phoebe Giannisi

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Readings, Performance, Conversation

Date: Tuesday, October 31
Time: 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. EDT

Please join us for a selection of poetry readings and performance by Greek poet Phoebe Giannisi and Giannisi’s poet-translator Brian Sneeden, in conversation with Laura Jansen.

Award-winner Phoebe Giannisi (Athens, 1964) is among Greece’s foremost contemporary poets. She is the author of eight books of poetry, three of which, Homerica (2017), Chimera (2019), and Cicada (2022), have now been translated into English by poet-translator Brian Sneeden. Her award-winning work focuses on field of ecopoetics, on the polyphony of voices attached to place, and the ethnography of the animated subjects that inhabit it. Bodies, weather, earth, seeds, orality, writing, love, female condition, mythic personas, sound, multiplicity, language, and animal beings constitute the primary subjects for Giannisi’s poetic activity. This hybrid event offers a unique opportunity to experience Giannisi’s performative poetry both in modern Greek and English, followed by an in-conversation about her multimediatic poetic practice and thought.

This event will be held virtually on Zoom, as well as in person. Please register for the Zoom here.

The Bristol Poetry Institute is proud to support this event, hosted by the Center for Hellenic Studies (Harvard) in collaboration with the APGRD (University of Oxford), the Michael Marks Trust, and New Directions Publishing.

National Poetry Day Reading with Alice Oswald and Kim Moore

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

The Bristol Poetry Institute, in collaboration with Poetry by Heart, are pleased to invite you to a free reading in celebration of National Poetry Day. This event feature will readings by Alice Oswald and Kim Moore.

Fri, 6 October 2023, 18:15 – 19:30 BST

Priory Road Complex

Lecture Theatre

12 Priory Road Bristol BS8 1TU

Book your free place here

 

Find out more about Alice Oswald here

Find out more about Kim Moore here

 

Find out more about Poetry By Heart here

Our friends at Heron Books will have the poets’ books available for sale

 

Poetry By Heart will be hosting the Bristol Teachers’ Poetry Club before the reading; all teachers, school librarians and trainee teachers are most welcome to join us. Contact us on info@poetrybyheart.org.uk to find out more.

Thank you to Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival for help and support with the poets and for supporting our next Poetry By Heart festival showcase. Thank you to Heron Books for supplying us with lots of great poetry and for their legendary poetry tweets.

Poetry and the Environment: Public Reading and Panel

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Join four great contemporary poets as they read from their poetry and discuss its response to the environment and the environmental crisis.

Thu, 25 May 2023 16:30 – 19:30 BST

Old Council Chamber

Wills Memorial Building Tower

Queens Road Bristol BS8 1RJ

Book here

Schedule

4.30-5.15pm Poet’s panel : Hugh Dunkerley, Carrie Etter and Yvonne Reddick

5.15-5.30 Alycia Pirmohamed (online reading)

5.30 Drinks Break

6pm -7 Live Reading by Hugh Dunkerley, Carrie Etter and Yvonne Reddick

Earlier in the afternoon there will be academic papers on ‘Climate Crisis, Lyric Crisis?: Contemporary Poetry and the Environment’. If you would like to attend the papers or indeed give a paper yourself, please email m.malay@bristol.ac.uk or William.Wootten@bristol.ac.uk

Poets

Hugh Dunkerley’s poetry collections include Hare (Cinnamon Press, 2010) and Kin (2019). He also writes on literature and environment as well as being a short story writer. Hugh’s award winning lecture, ‘Some Thoughts on Poetry and Fracking’, was delivered at the 2016 Hay International Festival. He is Professor of Literature and Environment at the University of Chichester.

Carrie Etter’s poetry collections include The Tethers (Seren, 2009), Divining for Starters (Shearsman, 2012), Imagined Sons (Seren, 2014) and The Weather in Normal (Seren, 2018). She is also an essayist, short story writer and reviewer, and the editor of Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (Shearman, 2010) and Linda Lamus’s posthumous A Crater the Size of Calcutta (2015). An U.S. born poet resident in England, Carrie is recipient of the 2009 London New Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the 2015 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. She lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol.

Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the collection Another Way to Split Water (Polygon, 2022), as well as the pamphlets Hinge (Ignition Press, 2020) and Faces that Fled the Wind (BOAAT Press, 2018) and the collaborative essay Second Memory, co-authored with Pratyusha. A Canadian-born poet based in Scotland, Alycia is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge.

Yvonne Reddick is the author of the collection Burning Season (Cinnamon Press, 2023) and the pamphlet Translating Mountains (Seren, 2017), which won the Mslexia Magazine Pamphlet Competition as well as the critical book Ted Hughes: Environmentalist and Ecopoet (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She is the recipient of a Leadership Fellowship from AHRC, and has received a Northern Writer’s Award, a Hawthornden Fellowship and a place on the 2017-18 Jerwood/Arvon mentoring scheme. She is a Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire.

This event is organised by the Bristol Poetry Institute together with the Centre for Environmental Humanities.

Call for Proposals: Climate Crisis, Lyric Crisis?

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Climate Crisis, Lyric Crisis?:

Contemporary Poetry and the Environment

 

‘Un-/

natural says the news. Also the body says it.’ Jorie Graham

 

‘I place my feet/

with care in such a world.’ William E. Stafford

 

‘Task: to be where I am.’ Tomas Tranströmer

 

What is the role of poetry in times of loss and unravelling? How do poets respond to environmental distress – and register the unnaturalness of the current weather – even as they continue to bear careful witness to their local landscapes and places? If ignorance about what is lost ‘undermines the reality of the world’, as Zbigniew Herbert put it, then how might poets affirm reality without also affirming negation?

We invite proposals that explore these and related questions. Any approach is welcome, although we are especially interested in presentations that offer close readings of contemporary poets. Papers can be anywhere between 15-20 minutes long, and we particularly welcome submissions from postgraduate students.

Further details:

This symposium will take place at the University of Bristol, from 1.30-7.30 on the 25th of May. The day will consist of academic papers, a poet’s panel featuring Hugh Dunkerley, Carrie Etter and Yvonne Reddick, and conclude with in person readings by Hugh Dunkerley and Yvonne Reddick and an online reading by Alycia Pirmohamed.

If you’d like to present a paper, please submit abstracts to William Wootten and Michael Malay at the following addresses: william.wootten@bristol.ac.uk & m.malay@bristol.ac.uk