What’s On

Announcing the 2023-2024 Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading

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

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

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

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

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?

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

April Events with the Bristol Poetry Institute

The Bristol Poetry Institute is involved with a number of events coming up this month. We hope you can join us. All are very welcome!
  • Price: Free
    Time: 18:00 – 19:00
    Join Samantha Walton, Jason Baskin and Cliff Williamson in this panel discussion, chaired by Madhu Krishnan, as they discuss poems of past and present and consider what it really means to ‘write the city’. This event will be BSL interpreted and live captioned. Presented in partnership with Bristol Ideas and Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival.
  • Annual Reading with Denise Riley (21 April)
    Price: Free
    Time: 18:00 – 19:00
    The Bristol Poetry Institute, with the support of the Department of English and School of Modern Languages, are very pleased to present British poet and philosopher Denise Riley as this year’s annual reader. The event will last one hour and comprise of a poetry reading and a question and answer session. A 20-minute book signing with the poet will follow the reading.
  • Watch Words: The Furnivals and Text (as) Art in the Long Sixties (22 April) 
    Price: £5 – £10
    Time: 10:00 – 18:00
    Taking John and Astrid Furnivals’ work as a point of inspiration, this conference will explore the intersection of text and art during the long sixties, considering connections to a range of contemporary cultural, political, economic, and technological concerns.
  • Multilingual Poetry Reading (23 April)
    Price: FreeTime: 15:45 – 16:45
    A special poetry reading featuring multilingual poets in Bristol. English text versions will be projected in the background. The showcase will be headlined by DL Williams, performing work from their collection Interdimensional Traveller, exploring British Sign Language and English. The event will be BSL interpreted. Presented in partnership with Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival.
  • Catalan Poetry Showcase (27 April)
    Price: Free
    Time: 18:00 – 19:00

    The Bristol Poetry Institute, in collaboration with the Institut Ramon Llull and the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, are pleased to invite you to a showcase of recent Catalan poetry. This one-hour event will feature bilingual readings with English translations of four Catalan poets, with the special collaboration of Dominic Jaeckle, writer and editor of Tenement Press.

Bristol Poetry Institute Presents: Catalan Poetry Showcase

The Bristol Poetry Institute, in collaboration with the Instituto Ramón Llull and the Department of Hispanic, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, are pleased to invite you to a showcase of recent Catalan poetry. This one-hour event will feature bilingual readings with English translations, of four Catalan poets.

Mon, 24 April 2023, 18:00 – 21:00 BST

Wills Memorial Building

1.11 Old Council Chamber

Queens Rd Bristol BS8 1RL

Book your free place here

 

About the poets 

Míriam Cano is a journalist, writer and translator. A lecturer and director at the Bloom School where she gives seminars on Poetic Reading and Creation, she also works with several Catalan cultural media outlets as a columnist and literary journalist. Notable in her career as a writer are several collections of poems, among them Buntsandstein (Red Sandstone, Viena, 2013), winner of the 2012 Martí Dot prize, Ancoratge (Anchorage, Terrícola, 2016), and Vermell de Rússia (Russian Red, laBreu Edicions, 2020). She also wrote the short story “La Comuna de París” (The Paris Commune) in the jointly authored volume Cremen Cels (Burning Skies, laBreu Edicions, 2017), a project in collaboration with Martí Sales and Antònia Vicens. As a translator she has rendered into Catalan works by authors including Emily Dickinson, Albert Camus, Sandra Cisneros, Maggie Nelson, Lauren Groff, Martha Nussbaum, Joana Russ and John Ashbery. She is also the coeditor of the magazine Carn de Cap.

Jaume C. Pons Alorda (Caimari, Mallorca, 1984) holds a bachelor’s degree in English Philology and a masters in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature and Cultural Management from the University of the Balearic Islands. He is an award-winning writer, translator, publisher, and creative writing teacher. He in the author of multiple poetry collections, including the trilogy Tots els sepuclres (2015), as well as Cala foc als ossos (2016), Era (2018), Riu, bèstia (2023) and Mil súmmums (2022), among others. He has also published prose works, such as Faula (2012) and Ciutat de Mal (2019). Pons Alorda has translated Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth , and Elizabeth Bishop into Catalan, and he is currently working on translations of Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Iris Murdoch, Edgar Allan Poe and William Blake. He is currently editor of the Artificium and Debiaix series for the publishing house, Lleonard Muntaner. Additionally, he writes articles in the press (Ara Balears, Lletres Bàrbares, El Temps) and participates in the podcast L’illa de Maians at the Ona Llibres bookshop in Barcelona.

Xavier Mas Craviotto (Navàs, 1996) studied Catalan Philology and a postgraduate program in Language Consultancy and Publishing Services at the University of Barcelona. For two years, he worked at the Research Centre for Sociolinguistics and Communication (CUSC-UB). He is currently a lecturer at the University of Bristol, where he teaches Cataln language and culture, and also works as a proofreader for Catalan publishing houses. He is one of the cofounders of “Com ho diria”, a digital platform that specializes in slang used by young Catalan speakers. He is also an award-winning author of poetry and prose fiction. At the age of 17, he was a finalist in the Jordi Sierra i Fabra Literary Prize of Spain and Latin America and, since then, he has won more than twenty narrative and poetry awards. His first novel, La mort lenta (2019) won the Documenta Prize, and he has recently published his second novel, La pell del món (2023). He has also published three poetry collections: Renills de cavall negre (2019), which won the Salvador Iborra prize, La gran nàusea (2021) and La llum subterrània (2023), which was awarded the Ausiàs March prize. His short stories have been included in collaborative anthologies and he has participated in many poetry readings and panel discussions about language and literature.

Eduard Escoffet (Barcelona, 1979) is a poet and visual/sound artist. He has worked across many styles of poetry (visual and written poetry, installations, oral poetry, poetic action), but principally is principally invested in sound poetry and poetry performance. He has performed in poetry festivals and events across Europe, China, the United States, South Africa, and many countries in Latin America. Starting from an exploration of the body, the voice and the text, his poetry expands into territories such as politics, sex and architecture, with special attention to their political meaning. He has presented his work in venues and festivals all over the world, and has created sound and audiovisual pieces for several institutions and festivals. He has published the poetry collections Gaire (2012), El terra i el cel (2013), and Menys i tot (2017) in Catalan; the artist’s book Estramps (2021) with the artist Evru; as well as prints of his visual and graphic poetry. Escoffet has also released two records with the electronic music group Bradien: Pols (2012) and Escala (2015). He is now member of the band Barba Corsini (www.barbacorsini.net). http://propost.org/escoffet. Videos: http://youtube.com/txtstate. Sound: http://soundcloud.com/txtstate

 

BPI Annual Reading with Denise Riley to take place on 21 April

Author photo of Denise Riley smiling warmly

We are delighted to announce that this year’s Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading by Denise Riley has been rescheduled and will take place on 21 April 2023 at 6PM in the Wills Memorial Building Great Hall

Book your free ticket here.

Over the last five decades, Denise Riley has steadily acquired the reputation of being, in the words of Simon Armitage, ‘one of the best poets around’. Sarah Perry, writer of The Essex Serepent, and Max Porter, writer of Grief is a Thing With Feathers, each called her 2016 volume, Say Something Back ‘the best thing I’ve read in ages’, while Robert Macfarlane declared the book’s ‘heart-piercing elegy to her son Jacob, “A Part Song”: the most powerful contemporary poem I’ve read in years’. 2022 sees the much anticipated publication of its successor, Lurex. The evening promises to be enjoyable, thought provoking and moving.

Denise Riley lives in London. Her prose books are War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother [1983], ‘Am I That Name?’ Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History [1988], The Words of Selves: Identification, Solidarity, Irony (2000), The Force of Language (with Jean-Jacques Lecercle; 2004), Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect (2005) and Time Lived, Without Its Flow [2012].  Poetry collections include Marxism for Infants (1977), Dry Air (1985), Mop Mop Georgette (1993), Penguin Modern Poets series 2, vol 10 (with Douglas Oliver and Iain Sinclair; 1996), Selected Poems (2000, 2019), Say Something Back (2016), Penguin Modern Poets series 3, vol 6 [with Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine; 2017], Lurex [2022].

Admissions to the 2022-2023 Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading are free but booking will be essential.

Reading and Discussion of Temporary Archives

Please join the Bristol Poetry Institute for a reading and discussion of Temporary Archives: Poems by Women of Latin America, led by poet and co-editor Jèssica Pujol Duran. This one-hour event will also feature readings by Luna Montenegro, Gladys Mendía, Paula Ilabaca and Virna Teixeira. Free and open to all.
 
Reading & Discussion: 
Temporary Archives, Poetry by Women of Latin America
20 January 2023
13:00 – 14:00 GMT
ARTS CMPLX 1.H021 7 
Woodland Road Bristol BS8 1TB

Temporary Archives, Poetry by Women of Latin America edited by Juana Adcock and Jèssica Pujol Duran

Latin America is known to be producing some of the most exciting literature in the world today. With the region’s rich intersecting traditions, history of migrations, political movements, and commitment to poetic innovation, the women poets who are currently working there are some of the fiercest and most creative voices in the 21st century. Temporary Archives brings together 24 of the most widely-read women poets working in Spanish, Portuguese and indigenous languages throughout the Latin American continent, who are in dialogue with each other, their traditions, and with the current literatures and political movements in the region. With a vibrant women’s movement gaining increasing traction in countries such as Chile, Argentina and Mexico, this anthology is a timely contribution to the works currently being published in English translation.

Jèssica Pujol Duran (Barcelona, 1982) is a poet, translator, and researcher, currently working as Assistant Professor at the University of Santiago de Chile. In 2016, she earned a PhD in Comparative Literature at University College London, entitled ‘From Experimental to Experimentalism: Italo Calvino and Julio Cortázar in Paris 1963-1973’; in 2017 she was granted funding from the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (Fondecyt) in Chile to undertake a Postdoctoral project entitled ‘La poética de lo experimental. Poesía multimodal en hispanoamérica’. Her conferences and publications are in the field of comparative literature, experimental translation, and Latin American studies. She is the editor of Alba Londres. Culture in Translation, a magazine that publishes Latin American poetry in translation in the UK, and her most recent publications include a translation of poet Lisa Robertson, Los hombres (Bisturí10, 2022); a selection and co-translation of Sean Bonney’s work, La revolución de las esferas celestes (Pez Espiral, 2022); a book of poems, El campo envolvente (LP5 Editora, 2021), and the anthology Temporary Archives, Poetry by Women of Latin America (Arc Publications, 2022).