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