Enjoy Reading's first ever poetry festival 5-9 June
Friday, 31 May 2013
'Reading isn't a town which many people identify with poetry but the first Reading Poetry Festival looks set to change that.'
The University is delighted to have organised Reading's first ever poetry festival which runs from Wednesday 5 - Sunday 9 June.
During the five days the festival will encompass a broad range of events, from a children's poetry day (with John Hegley) and an exhibition focusing on the ‘look of poetry', to readings and conversations with over 20 poets from Reading and around the UK, including Ian Sinclair, Zoe Skoulding and Mark Ford.
"Reading isn't a town which many people identify with poetry," said Peter Robinson, Professor of English and American Literature and co-organiser of the festival. "Yes, it's where Oscar Wilde did his time, but unlike, say, The Lake District, it's not immediately associated with outbursts of creativity and literary endeavour - despite fleeting visits by the likes of Coleridge, Rimbaud and Montale. The first Reading Poetry Festival looks set to change that."
Peter, himself the author of more than twenty books of poetry and criticism, added: "The idea is to play up the strengths we have here, both in the town and the University, while at the same time making a point of Reading as a transit point, a place where writers from all over have moved through and left traces. We're interested in exploring poetry and psychogeography, poetry and economics, city poetry and the pastoral."
The exhibition launched during the festival also promises to offer a perspective on poetry as a visual form.
"It will show how attractive and strange poetry can be to the eye," said research fellow Natalie Pollard, Peter's co-organiser. "We suspend poems from the ceiling, project larger-than-life poems onto the walls, and display Edward Lear's cartoon blocks that accompanied his nonsense verse.
"There will be readings as well, with a selection of poets from Two Rivers Press and a bilingual reading of Italian poet Vittorio Sereni's work to mark the centenary of his birth joining events featuring Sinclair, Hegley, Ford and Skoulding."
For more information about Reading Poetry Festival see the Facebook page, Twitter or the Reading Poetry Festival website (which was designed by some of the University's Typography students).
This year's Gerald Finzi Memorial Lecture will be given by Iain Sinclair: 'An American smoke: journeys to the end of the light' on Wednesday 5 June.
Don't forget there are lots of other events going on throughout June as part of the University's Celebration of Arts and Culture.