Wonderful evening. Thanks to all who came.

POETRY At The Room

Thursday 11 October 2018 – at 7.30 at The Room, 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 9AS

7.30 pm. Special GREY SUIT launch addition – for Dialysis Days by Hugo Williams, a new chap-book by Grey Suit Editions.

free with refreshments

Featuring Hugo Williams, supported by Kerry-Lee Powell, Alan Jenkins and Glyn Maxwell – hosted by Anthony Howell.

Hugo Williams with Anthony Howell – photo by David Larcher

Hugo Williams’s poems engage themes of personal memory, childhood, and sexuality with a plainspoken yet wry voice. In an interview with The Guardian, Williams discussed the autobiographical element of his work, stating, “You really can’t start if you’re not going to be completely honest. You have to use everything you know.… [Y]ou do sometimes enter into a sort of doublethink: ‘They won’t like it, but they might like it more if it’s well done.’”

Williams is the author of more than a dozen collections of poetry, including West End Final (2009), Collected Poems (2002), Billy’s Rain (1999), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize, Selected Poems (1989), and his Eric Gregory Award–winning debut, Symptoms of Loss (1965). A selection of his freelance writing appears in the essay collection Freelancing: Adventures of a Poet (1995). His additional honors include the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Cholmondeley Award.

A columnist for the Times Literary Supplement, Williams lives in London.

Kerry-Lee Powell

Born in Montreal, Kerry-Lee Powell has lived in Antigua, Australia and the United Kingdom, where she studied Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cardiff University. Her work has appeared in The Spectator, Magma and The Boston Review. A collection of her poetry, Inheritance, was published by Biblioasis in 2014. She has also published a book of short stories, William de Kooning’s Paintbrush, with Harper Avenue in 2016.

Alan Jenkins

Alan Jenkins was brought up on the outskirts of London in Richmond, and educated at the University of Sussex, and has worked for The Times Literary Supplement since 1981. He was also a poetry critic for The Observer, and the Sunday Independent from 1985 to 1990. He edited the “Collected Poems of Ian Hamilton” (Faber & Faber, 2009). He has published six volumes of poetry including A Shorter Life (2005) and Revenants (2013). He is now Deputy Editor and Poetry Editor of The Times Literary Supplement. He has taught creative writing for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Arvon Foundation, the Poetry Society, London, and at the American University in Paris. He was a judge for the Christopher Tower Poetry Prizes.

Glyn Maxwell’s volumes of poetry include The Breakage, Hide Now,and Pluto, all of which were shortlisted for either the Forward or T. S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. On Poetry, a guidebook for the general reader, was published by Oberon in 2012. The Spectator called it ‘a modern classic’ and The Guardian’s Adam Newey described it as ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read.’ Many of Maxwell’s plays have been staged in London and New York, including Liberty at Shakespeare’s Globe, and at the Almeida, Arcola, RADA and Southwark Playhouse. His opera libretti include The Firework Maker’s Daughter(composer David Bruce) which was shortlisted for ‘Best New Opera’ at the Oliviers in 2014, Seven Angels (Luke Bedford) and The Lion’s Face (Elena Langer). These were staged at the Royal Opera House and toured the UK. In 2016 Nothing  (composer David Bruce) was staged at Glyndebourne. He is currently adapting The Magic Flute for Opera UpClose.

All enquiries – 0208 801 8577

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Previous Events:

Saturday 7 April 6.30 pm – at The Upper Vestry Hall, Saint George’s Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2SA

Reading:

Kerry-Lee Powell, Rosanne Wasserman, Eugene Richie, Donald Gardner, Alan Jenkins, Anthony Howell and Fawzi Karim.

Readings at 7 pm. The hall is just round the back of this magnificent Hawksmoor church.

We have taken over this larger venue to celebrate Grey Suit Editions – and our series of Chap-books. Many of our poets from the United States and from Canada have come over to join us. We have seven readers and there will be plenty of refreshment, and it is a FREE EVENT since it is the launch of chap-books by Rosanne Wasserman and Donald Gardner. Rosanne’s husband Eugene Richie will also read with us.

Rosanne Wasserman

Rosanne Wasserman’s poetry embodies the New York School’s fascination with language, form, humor, and irreverence. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1952, her books—The Lacemakers, No Archive on Earth, and Other Selves—include variants on Moore’s stanzas; Pound’s imitation ancient Greek, Chinese, and Provencal forms; centos, sestinas, pantoums, and Oulipo games. Her new chapbook from Grey Suit Editions, Sonnets from Elizabeth’s, is a 42-poem sequence riffing on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her poems, essays, and other work appear in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, both in print and online. She and Eugene Richie founded the Groundwater Press in 1974, giving many third- and fourth-generation New York School poets their first publications. She has received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts; attended workshops in Manhattan and Brooklyn led by John Yau, Bianca Stone, Emily Skillings, and Simone Kearney; and interviewed Pierre Martory and James Schuyler for the American Poetry Review. With Eugene Richie, she has written two collaborations—Place du Caruousel and Psyche and Amor—as well as edited the two-volume Collected French Translations of John Ashbery. For twenty-five years, she has taught English and cinema to merchant sailors at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, Long Island.

Eugene Richie

Eugene Richie was born in Winona, Minnesota, in 1951, and has lived in New York since 1974. He is Director of Creative Writing in the Pace University English Department, where he teaches creative writing and literature courses. His collections of poetry include Moiré; Island Light; and, with Rosanne Wasserman, Place du Carousel and Psyche and Amor. A new book of poems, Views of Little Neck Bay, is forthcoming in 2019 from Gnosis Press. Of his poetry, John Ashbery has said he reveals “the landscape of love we all carry around with us, that we use to accost, identify, and finally understand the ‘real’ one yapping at our ankles.” He has translated, with Edith Grossman, two poetry collections of the Colombian writer Jaime Manrique (Scarecrow and My Night with Federico García Lorca, a Lambda Literary Award finalist); two collections, with Raimundo Mora, of stories by the Venezuelan writer Matilde Daviu; and with Medievalist Martha Diver, tales by John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Thomas Chester. He has edited Ashbery’s Selected Prose, and, with Wasserman and Olivier Brossard, three bilingual collections of Ashbery’s translations of poems by French poet and novelist Pierre Martory: The Landscape Is behind the Door; Oh, Lake / Oh, lac; and The Landscapist (a London Poetry Book Society Recommendation and a U.S. National Book Critics Circle Award poetry finalist). With Wasserman, he edited Ashbery’s Collected French Translations, a London Poetry Book Society Recommendation and a finalist for the U.S. Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism.

Kerry-Lee Powell

Born in Montreal, Kerry-Lee Powell has lived in Antigua, Australia and the United Kingdom, where she studied Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cardiff University. Her work has appeared in The Spectator, Magma and The Boston Review. A collection of her poetry, Inheritance, was published by Biblioasis in 2014. She has also published a book of short stories, William de Kooning’s Paintbrush, with Harper Avenue in 2016.

Alan Jenkins

Alan Jenkins was brought up on the outskirts of London in Richmond, and educated at the University of Sussex, and has worked for The Times Literary Supplement since 1981. He was also a poetry critic for The Observer, and the Sunday Independent from 1985 to 1990. He edited the “Collected Poems of Ian Hamilton” (Faber & Faber, 2009). He has published six volumes of poetry including A Shorter Life (2005) and Revenants (2013). He is now Deputy Editor and Poetry Editor of The Times Literary Supplement.

He has taught creative writing for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Arvon Foundation, the Poetry Society, London, and at the American University in Paris. He was a judge for the Christopher Tower Poetry Prizes

Fawzi Karim

Fawzi Karim was born in Baghdad in 1945, and is now living in London. He is rapidly establishing a reputation as a major figure in contemporary poetry. Plague Lands (Carcanet) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation for 2011. He has been reviewing Classical Music and English Poetry in ASHARQ ALAWSAT, the Arabic newspaper, London, since 1980s.  A second book of his poems is due to be published by Carcanet.     

Donald Gardner

London-born Donald Gardner is a poet and literary translator who has lived in Italy, New York and the Netherlands. Currently he divides his time between Amsterdam and Kildare, Ireland. His most recent collection is ‘The Wolf Inside’, (Hearing Eye, 2014). His selection of Remco Campert’s poetry, ‘In those Days’ (Shoestring Press), also appeared in 2014 and was awarded the Vondel Prize for literary translation. He is known for his readings of his poetry. ‘Donald Gardner’s work is light but not trivial; clear but technically subtle and eloquent. His poetry captures his images in few words: sharply, precisely.’ Leah Fritz on ‘The Wolf Inside’ (London Grip online).

Anthony Howell

Anthony Howell is a poet and novelist whose first collection of poems, Inside the Castle was brought out in 1969.  In 1986 his novel In the Company of Others was published by Marion Boyars.  Another novel Oblivion has recently been published by Grey Suit editions.  He was invited to the International Writers Program, University of Iowa in 1971.  His Selected Poems came out from Anvil, and his Analysis of Performance Art is published by Routledge.  His poems have appeared in The New Statesman, The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement.  His articles on visual art, dance, performance and poetry have appeared in many journals and magazines including Artscribe, Art Monthly, The London Magazine, and Harpers & Queen.  In 1997 he was short-listed for a Paul Hamlyn Award for his poetry. His versions of the Silvae of Statius have been well received and Plague Lands, his versions of the poems of Iraqi poet Fawzi Karim, were a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for 2011. A former dancer with the Royal Ballet, and now a respected teacher of the tango, Howell was founder and director of The Theatre of Mistakes, which created notable performances worldwide in the seventies and eighties – at venues such as the Paris Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, the Paula Cooper Gallery, the Theater for the New City (NY) and at the Tate and the Haywood. Play-scripts of his performances are now published by Grey Suit Editions. He is a Hawthornden Fellow.  Howell is currently curating The Room, a space for dance, performance, poetry and visual art in Tottenham, London.

All enquiries – 0208 801 8577

Details of Grey Suit editions can be found here