Jan Wagner Image: Alberto Novelli, Villa Massimo

The Poetry Society Annual Lecture in partnership with New College Oxford, by the German poet and translator, Jan Wagner.

The first of four weekly lectures by distinguished poet Sean O’Brien, Visiting Humanitas-Weidenfeld Professor, is on Tuesday 7th February.

Schedule:

Tuesday 7 February 2017  ‘For dreams are licensed as they never were’. What becomes of the history poem?

Tuesday 14 February 2017 Displacement: Irish poetry and poets of Irish descent in Britain.

Tuesday 21 February 2017   ‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee’ or ‘The Faster We Go the Rounder We Get’.

Tuesday 28 February 2017 In Conversation with Patrick McGuinness

The lectures take place at 5.30 in the Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre at St Anne’s College. The first lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.  All welcome, no need to book.

Further details.

“Tango in Stanzas: The Path from Page to Stage”

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch

Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm

All are welcome and no bookings are necessary.

Is there a difference between a performance poet and a poet who performs their work? In 2015 poet Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch won an Arts Council Creative Wales Award to write, perform and dance Tango in Stanzas, an exploration of poetic metre through the medium of dance. Samantha will trace her creative journey to this performance piece, charting how her poetry has evolved from being primarily page-based to stage-based and examine the way this development has in turn impacted on her creative process.

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has published three collections of poetry. Her work has been shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year (Not in These Shoes, Picador 2008), the Roland Mathias Prize (Banjo, Picador 2012) and the Michael Marks Award (Lime & Winter, Rack 2014). Samantha’s poems have appeared in Granta, the Financial Times, the Independent and Poetry Wales. She runs a writers’ retreat on the Wales Coastal Path www.writebythecoast.co.uk.

Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan

http://www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/researchcentres/CW

“Finding a Voice and Losing it Again: Influence, Expectation and Identity”

Maura Dooley

Mawby Room, Kellogg College,
62 Banbury Road
5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm

All are welcome and no bookings are necessary

Maura Dooley’s most recent collection of poetry is The Silvering (Bloodaxe). Anthologies she has edited include The Honey Gatherers: Love Poems and How Novelists Work. In 2015 she was Poet-in-Residence at the Jane Austen House Museum, Chawton. Her poems from the residency are published as a pamphlet: A Quire of Paper. In 2014 she published a pamphlet of versions (with Elhum Shakerifa) of work by the exiled Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. She has twice been short-listed for the TS Eliot Award and twice for the Forward Single Poem Award. Her work has received an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award. She has directed Literature festivals, worked with Jim Henson film and Performing Arts Labs and currently teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan

http://www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/researchcentres/CW

Creative Writing Seminar Series
Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing
Mawby Room, Kellogg College, 62 Banbury Road

5 pm (refreshments) for 5.30 pm
Michaelmas Term Week 7: Thursday 24 November 2016
All are welcome and no bookings are necessary

Dr Anna Beer: “Breaking Stories: Writing Women’s Lives”

Women, just as much as men, believed and believe the stories we tell ourselves about genius. The composer and pianist Clara Wieck, soon to be married to (the tortured genius) Robert Schumann wrote: ‘I once thought I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose – not one has been able to do it, and why should I expect to?’

Anna Beer, author of Sounds and Sweet Airs: the Forgotten Women of Classical Music, will talk about the ways she as a writer set out to challenge Clara’s despair. She will argue that recovering a female tradition (whether in music or in literature) is only the first step, that – in the words of one scholar – it is not enough simply to rewrite history ‘on the principle of add women and stir’.

Beer will explore the possibility of casting aside the usual biographical pegs upon which we hang a creative woman’s life, whether the nun taken from the world, the sacrificial wife, or the maiden aunt. Perhaps it’s time to break the old story, and find new ways to tell the lives of creative powerful women.

Seminar Convenor: Dr Clare Morgan http://www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/researchcentres/CW