Category: Events

April Events with the Bristol Poetry Institute

Posted on by rebecca.kosick
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.

Reading and Discussion of Temporary Archives

Posted on by rebecca.kosick
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
Book your free place here

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).

Announcing the 2022 Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Author photo of Denise Riley smiling warmly

We are delighted to announce that this year’s Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading will be delivered by Denise Riley.

[Update 12/12/22: This event has unfortunately been cancelled due to illness and we are working to reschedule in 2023.]

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 Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading are free but booking will be essential.

Ways of Reading: Bernadette Mayer and the New York School

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

image from Rosemary Mayer's Ways of Attaching Exhibition

Join the Bristol Poetry Institute and Spike Island for a conversation and a collaborative writing session dedicated to the New York School poets and the works of Bernadette Mayer.

Date and time
Location
Spike Island 133 Cumberland Road Bristol BS1 6UX

Book your free place here

Bernadette Mayer is an influential avant-garde writer associated with the New York School poets of the mid-20th century. Like her artist sister Rosemary Mayer, she garnered visibility during the second-wave feminist movement in the US. Mayer is known for her experimental poetic forms and narrative structures akin to streams of consciousness, which examine the complexities of gender and sexuality within the intimate interactions and attachments of family life.

A conversation between Dr Rebecca Kosick, Co-Director of the Bristol Poetry Institute, and Dr Rosa Campbell, Associate Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of St Andrews, is followed by the collective reading of selected texts by Bernadette Mayer.

Ways of Reading is organised in collaboration with Spike Island and hosted on the occasion of Rosemary Mayer’s solo exhibition Ways of Attaching.

Bristol Poetry Institute at Lyra Festival (April)

Posted on by rebecca.kosick
The Bristol Poetry Institute is pleased to once again partner with Lyra, the Bristol Poetry Festival for a series of exciting events this spring. We’d love to see you for any of the below events. All are free and open to the public.

 

April is the cruellest month | The Waste Land Lecture

Date: Friday 1st April 2022

Time: 17:30

Tickets: From £0.00

Venue: Bristol Central Library

To mark this year’s 100th anniversary of The Waste Land, Jim McCue will consider why we are still reading T. S. Eliot’s poem, how our understanding of it has changed, and what was meant by “editing” it as part of a 2,000-page scholarly edition of the poetry.

 

Radical Translation | with Girasol Press

Date: Saturday 9th April 2022

Time: 17:00

Tickets: From £0.00

Venue: Wills Memorial Building (G25), Queens Rd, Bristol BS8 1QE

Radical Translation explores politically and artistically “radical” approaches to poetry in translation, featuring poets and translators published by or connected with Bristol-based small publisher Girasol Press. We’ll hear from Say, Spirit, Sheffield-based poet Alex Cocker’s experimental translations of Michelangelo’s sonnets, which tease out questions of androgyny, queer desire and the “trans” in translation. There will be readings of new work from Latinx poet and translator Juana Adcock, whose poetry explores living between languages and the violence of present-day Mexico, and from the writer and translator Jessica Sequeira, whose fiercely hybrid texts transgress boundaries of language and genre. Lastly, the afternoon will feature video contributions in Ch’ol and Tsotsil, as well as Spanish and English, from three Mexican poets (Canario de la Cruz, Edgar Darinel García, and Miriam Esperanza Hernández Vázquez) included in Jukub: Poems from Chiapas for the Reverse Conquest. Jukub, the Ch’ol word for canoe, alludes to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’s maritime delegation, which in 2021 sailed to Europe to mark 500 years since the “conquest” of Mexico in 1521. As a publisher, Girasol Press is interested in experimental approaches to translation and in the tactility and radical slowness of book-arts and antiquated print technologies, such as their trusty Adana 8×5!

 

Diana Bellessi | To Love A Woman/Amar a una mujer

Date: Saturday 9th April 2022

Time: 18:30

Tickets: From £0.00

Venue: Wills Memorial Building (G25), Queens Rd, Bristol BS8 1QE

Join Argentinian poet Diana Bellessi and translator Leo Boix to celebrate the publication of To Love A Woman. With support from Polish multilingual poet Bohdan Piasecki. Presented in partnership with the Poetry Translation Centre. Bellessi is a groundbreaking writer who has been credited as the godmother of LGBTQI+ poetry in Latin America. Over the decades she has championed feminist and queer issues and themes, and has exerted a strong influence on prominent poets and writers from the 1980’s through to the present day. Bellessi’s direct, simple aesthetic style was adopted, in part, to speak directly to ordinary people of Argentina over the literary intelligentsia, part of her deep commitment to highlighting the social condition of the working class in Latin America, alongside progressive politics and ecological conservation. A prolific writer, Bellessi has published 25 books and this selection draws from the whole range, charting the progression and evolution of her poetry. Largely untranslated until now, The Poetry Translation Centre is proud to be publishing this collection, many of the poems appearing in English for the first time. Bellessi and Boix will be reading from To Love A Woman in the original Spanish with English translations, and discussing her life and work. While the BPI has not organised this event, we are excited that it continues our engagement with Bellessi and Boix, following a PTC and BPI-hosted translation workshop led by Boix last spring.

 

Poetry Aloud | Featuring Daljit Nagra

Date: Sunday 10th April 2022

Time: 14:00

Tickets: From £0.00

Venue: St. George’s Bristol, Great George St, Bristol BS1 5RR

A free, fun and inspiring afternoon for children, young people and families with top poets and musicians. Children and young people from schools in Bristol and the surrounding areas will perform their chosen poems, old and new, and poems they have written themselves. This event is presented in partnership with Poetry By Heart. Children and young people, aged 7-18, can sign up to perform a poem of their choice by contacting info@poetrybyheart.org.uk. The event will feature special performances from former BPI Annual Reader Daljit Nagra and clare potter, and a poetry and music collaboration by Bob Walton and JOW.

Announcing the 2021 Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reader: Roger Robinson

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Headshot of Roger Robinson

Thu, 25 November 2021

18:30 – 19:30 GMT

Great Hall, Wills Memorial Building

Queen’s Road, Clifton Triangle

Bristol, BS8 1RJ

 

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance

 

We are very pleased to present Roger Robinson as this year’s Bristol Poetry Institute 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.

Roger Robinson is a writer who has performed worldwide. He is the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2020, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the Black-British writing canon. His latest collection ‘A Portable Paradise’ was a New Statesman book of the year. He is an alumnus of The Complete Works and was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize, The Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, commended by the Forward Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2020.

He has received commissions from The National Trust, London Open House, BBC, The National Portrait Gallery, V&A, INIVA, MK Gallery and Theatre Royal Stratford East where he also was associate artist.

He is an experienced workshop leader and has toured extensively with the British Council. His workshops have been part of a shortlist for the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries and were also a part of the Webby Award winning Barbican’s Can I Have A Word. He is co-founder of both Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. He is the lead vocalist and lyricist for King Midas Sound and has also recorded solo albums with Jahtari Records.

Audio Recording of La gran nàusea Booklaunch 25/10/21

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

On Monday 25 October, 2021, the Bristol Poetry Institute was delighted to host our first in-person event in over a year, featuring a bilingual Catalan/English reading and discussion of La gran nàusea, by Xavier Mas Craviotto. For those not able to attend, we hope you will enjoy this audio recording of the event, introduced by Miguel García Lopez.

Panel Discussion: Spoken Word in the UK

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The Bristol Poetry Institute would be delighted if you could join us for a panel discussion of Spoken Word in the UK.

Tue, 23 November 2021 | 19:30 – 20:45 GMT

Free and open to all, booking required

Book and attend via Zoom

Spoken Word in the UK, edited by Dr Lucy English and Dr Jack McGowan,  is a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to spoken word performance in the UK – its origins and development. Drawing together a wide range of scholars, critics and practitioners each chapter gives a new perspective on performance poetics. This is a crucial and ground-breaking book for those studying or teaching performance or poetry and opens up the discussion about widening participation in UK poetry.

In this event three of the authors will discuss their chapters and what the publication of this book means for contemporary poetry: Peter Bearder, Helen Johnson and Jacob Sam-La Rose. The event will be chaired by one of the book’s editors,  Dr Lucy English Professor of Creative Enterprise and The Spoken Word from Bath Spa University.

Pete Bearder is a spoken word poet, comic and musician whose work has been featured on BBC radio 4, The World Service and Newsnight. He is the former National Poetry Slam Champion and has performed around the world with organisations such as the British Council. His groundbreaking book, ‘Stage Invasion: Poetry and the Spoken Word Renaissance’ explored the history and practice of spoken word. ‘This is the book we have all been waiting for as we live through an unprecedented growth in the popularity and vitality of the poetry that revitalises the air we breathe.’ Ian McMillan.

© Pete Jones pete@pjproductions.co.ukHelen Johnson is a principal psychology lecturer at the University of Brighton and Co-Director for the University’s “Centre for Arts and Wellbeing.” She has been composing poetry since before she could hold a pen, and writing/performing spoken word since her twenties.  A social scientist by (academic) training, she began researching poets and poetry during her Masters.  Her PhD research focused on poetry slam communities in the U.S. and U.K.  Towards the end of her doctorate, she took over the management and curation of the Poetry&Words stage at Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, which she continues to manage to this day. Helen is a leading voice in spoken word/poetry slam scholarship and an expert in arts-based and creative research methods. She is particularly interested in the intersections between arts-based research, participatory research and social justice, and has developed the collaborative poetics method framed by these concerns.

by Amaal SaidJacob Sam-La Rose is a poet, educator and editor, deeply invested in supporting emerging poets and writers. He’s been responsible for Barbican Young Poets, the Spoken Word Education programme and Shake the Dust (youth slam and poetry-in-education CPD). His work has been translated into Portuguese, Latvian, French and Dutch, and his collection ‘Breaking Silence’ is studied at A’ level.

Researching Change Through Poetry Translation

Posted on by rebecca.kosick

Join the Bristol Poetry Institute for this interactive workshop and discover more about the relationship between moments of cultural (ex)change and upheaval. With the help of poet and co-director of the Bristol Poetry Institute Rebecca Kosick and Jonny Elling from the University of Bristol’s Department of Modern Languages, try your hand at producing translations of German and Spanish poetry, – no prior knowledge of the languages is required.

This event is co-hosted with Futures: European Researchers’ Night. Head over to their site for more information and a link to book.

Translation workshop with Leo Boix featuring poetry by Diana Bellessi

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Photo of Diana Bellessi

Date and time: 15 and 22 June, 18:30-20:00 BST

Cost: pay what you can

Register: via Eventbrite

In collaboration with the Poetry Translation Centre, we are very proud to present a workshop on Spanish poetry, focussing on the work of Argentine poet Diana Bellessi. A guide translation is provided by the guest translator so there is no need to know the language being translated, simply sign up and bring your love of language.

This online workshop will take place over two 90-minute sessions on Zoom over two consecutive Tuesdays. This format will let us spend time with a single poetic voice. The workshops will be led by translator Leo Boix.

Diana Bellessi is a poet from the province of Santa Fé in Argentina. Born in 1946, she has become one of the foremost voices in Latin America, her many awards include: 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, 1996 Antorchas Foundation fellowship, 2004 Premio Konex, Merit Award, 2007 Fondo Nacional de las Artes, lifetime award in poetry. She is considered to be the godmother of feminist / LGBTQI+ / Lesbian poetry in Argentina and her work demonstrates a deep commitment to progressive politics, ecological conservation and the social condition of the working class in Argentina and Latin America. Her poetry is seen as groundbreaking for its depiction of Lesbian desire and has exerted a strong influence on prominent poets and writers from the 80s and 90s through to the present day.

Leo Boix is a bilingual Latino British poet, translator and journalist based in the UK. He has published two collections in Spanish, Un lugarpropio (2015) and Mar de noche (2017), and was included in many anthologies, such as Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe) and Why Poetry? (Verve Poetry Press). His English poems have appeared widely including in Poetry, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, PNReview and The Rialto. Boix is a fellow of The Complete Works Program and co-director of ‘Invisible Presence’, a scheme to nurture new young voices of Latino poets in the UK. His debut collection of English poetry, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant, will be published by Chatto and Windus in 2021.

For more information, head over to Eventbrite.