MSt Tutor Helen Mort’s dedicated edition of BBC R4’s Poetry Please is available on BBC Sounds till 31st July, 2020.
“Helen Mort … she chooses her favourite poems. Including works by Wordsworth, Norman MacCaig and Karen McCarthy Woolf. “
MSt tutor Ella Hickson has been announced as the Old Vic Theatre’s new Associate Artist, hosting Creatives’ Corner instagram live chat, Wednesdays at 3pm.
From the Old Vic’s website:
“We are delighted to announce award-winning playwright Ella Hickson as our new Old Vic Associate Artist. Every Wednesday at 3pm, Ella will be leading conversations on Instagram Live with emerging talent from across different creative disciplines as we gain an insight into what it means to be working in theatre today.”
Visit the Creatives’ Corner.
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MSt tutor Marian Womack’s novel The Golden Key has been published by Titan Books. From the release note:
“After the death of Queen Victoria, England heaves with the uncanny. Séances are held and the dead are called upon from darker realms.
Helena Walton-Cisneros, known for her ability to find the lost and the displaced, is hired by the elusive Lady Matthews to solve a twenty-year-old mystery: the disappearance of her three stepdaughters who vanished without a trace on the Norfolk Fens.
But the Fens are an age-old land, where folk tales and dark magic still linger. The locals speak of devilmen and catatonic children are found on the Broads. Here, Helena finds what she was sent for, as the Fenland always gives up its secrets, in the end…”
MSt tutors Jane Draycott & Jenny Lewis will be reading at Carcanet’s 50 year celebration, Oxford, 20 Feb 2020.
The announcement:
| “Thursday 20 Feb 2020, 17:30 to 19:00 |
| Location:T S Eliot Theatre Merton College Oxford OX1 4JD |
| Description:Celebrate Fifty Years of Carcanet Press publishing some of the very best in contemporary poetry in an evening of readings and discussion Followed by a Drinks Reception at Merton College, Oxford. This convivial and informal evening hasbeen planned to highlight the poetry and creative practice of prominent poetson the Carcanet list, all of whom have connections to Oxford and the University. Join us to hear a range of readings by Peter McDonald, Jane Yeh, Rowland Bagnall, Jane Draycott, Peter Davidson and Jenny Lewis, and be part of a discussion that will take us from themes ofinfluence and tradition to a consideration of contemporary poetics and the roleof the poet in contemporary society. A drinks reception will follow thepresentation, where there will be an opportunity to meet the poets, purchasecopies of recent collections and learn more about the work of Carcanet Press inmaking a major contribution to our cultural life in the UK and beyond. The evening is hosted by Kirsty Gunn,Visiting Creative Research Fellow, Merton College. All welcome, no tickets necessary. “ |
MSt director Dr Clare Morgan shared her thoughts on “The Hidden Power of Poetry to Make Better Entrepreneurs” with the Wall Street Journal . The article (paywall) is available here.
MSt tutor James Womack’s translation of Manuel Vilas “Heaven” has been published by Carcanet. He has also written a blog post about it.
From the announcement:
A collection of dark, funny Iberian poems about drinking, sex and death.
Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of life, the poems are also resolutely Spanish in how they speak – bluntly, humorously – always alert for the fantastic.
This is the first translation of Vilas’s two major collections Heaven (El cielo, 2000) and Heat (Calor, 2008) into English. Thematically fuelled with alcohol, death and sex, they go off into free-wheeling megalomaniacal flights of fantasy. The translator, James Womack, has won prizes for his versions of Vilas and of the Russian poet Mayakovsky.”
You can read about the book, and buy it here.
MSt tutor Jane Draycott and MSt alumnus Luke Allen have won second and third TLS Mick Imlah Poetry Prizes, respectively. You can read the poems and about the prize here.
MSt tutor Amal Chatterjee’s article “How Europe’s Roman roads reveal the challenge of rebuilding after colonialism” has been published in Prospect online.
“It’s a known phenomenon: systems and structures, if robust, continue to work for as long as they are unchanged.
Once upon a time, the Romans ruled a vast swathe of Europe, of North Africa, and of what is now called the Middle East. Where they conquered, they built towns and cities, many of which survive to this day …“
Read the full article on the Prospect website.
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