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
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.
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.
Helen Johnson is a principal psychology lecturer at the University of Brighton and Co-Director for the University’s “
Jacob 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.