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Literature Live at Lancaster, 2012

As well as hosting a year-round research seminar series, the Department of English & Creative Writing invites guest speakers – poets, novelists, screenwriters, playwrights – to read from their work and talk about writing. The series was inaugurated in Michaelmas Term 2006, when two distinguished novelists, Jim Crace and Sarah Hall, came to give readings and to talk about their work in progress. Both events attracted large audiences. There is a clip below from the interview with Sarah Hall. For other speakers in the series, see our Literature Live Archive below.

JACOB POLLEY

4pm, 23rd May 2012, Peter Scott Gallery

The award-winning poet and novelist and Lancaster alumnus, Jacob Polley will be giving a reading on 23rd May at 4pm in the Peter Scott Gallery.

Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle in 1975. Picador published his first book of poetry, The Brinkin 2003, and his second, Little Gods in 2006. His first novel with Picador, Talk of the Town, came out in 2009 and won the Somerset Maugham Award. Jacob was selected as one of the Next Generation of British Poets in 2004. In 2002 he won an Eric Gregory Award and the Radio4/Arts Council 'First Verse' Award. For more infromation, please see www.jacobpolley.com

All welcome.

This reading is part of the MA in Creative Writing Open Day. For more information, or to register your interest in attending the Open Day, pleae contact Lyn Kellett at l.kellett@lancaster.ac.uk

Literature Live at Lancaster Archive, 2006-11

AUGUST KLEINZAHLER

Wednesday 11th May 2011

6pm in the Peter Scott Gallery

We are delighted to announce that US poet August Kleinzahler will give a reading on Wednesday 11th May 2011. His reading at Lancaster is in association with the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts and Faber & Faber. The event will be free and open to all.

August Kleinzahler is here to promote a UK edition of Sleeping It Off in Rapid City, published by Faber & Faber in February this year. Kleinzahler published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. Since then, he has published seven others, including Storm over Hackensack (1985); Earthquake Weather (1989); Red Sauce Whiskey and Snow (FSG, 1995); Green Sees Things in Waves (FSG, 1998); and Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990 (FSG, 2000). In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the 2004 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was short-listed for the U.K.'s Forward Prize in Poetry. His most recent collection of poetry is Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (Faber & Faber, 2011). He is also the author of a book of prose, Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004). His poems have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Harper's Magazine, Grand Street, The Threepenny Review, and The Paris Review. He has also written essays and criticism for The London Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Sulfur, and the San Diego Reader. A native of Jersey City, Kleinzahler is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson Reader's Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship. Kleinzahler has been a taxi driver, a locksmith, a logger, and a building manager. He has taught creative writing courses at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, as well as to homeless veterans in the Bay Area. He lives in San Francisco.

SARA MAITLAND

5 pm, Thursday 11th March 2010
Bowland North SR2

silence Sara Maitland, award-winning novelist, short story writer and writer of creative non-fiction will be reading from her work and discussing the writing process at 5pm on 11th March 2010 (venue tbc). All welcome.

Sara's story, "Moss Witch", which appeared in a Comma Press anthology, When it Changed (ed. Geoff Ryman), was runner up for the prestigious BBC National Short Story Award in December 2009. Her memoir, A Book of Silence, published to critical acclaim by Granta in November 2008, has been described as "interwoven with the history of silence through fairy-tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home. A Book of Silence is a deeply thoughtful, honest and illuminating memoir about a phenomenon too often neglected in the contemporary world." Click here to read Peter Stanford's interview, “Sara Maitland: A very unlikely modern hermit”, published in The Independent on Sunday 26th October. See also “Beyond peace and quiet,” The Guardian, Saturday November 8 2008 - an edited extract from A Book of Silence.

Sara's earlier publications include her 1978 novel, Daughter of Jerusalem (Blond and Briggs), which won the Somerset Maugham Award; Telling Tales (Journeyman Press, 1983); Weddings and Funerals (Brilliance Books, 1984, with Aileen la Tourette); Virgin Territory (Michael Joseph 1984); A Book of Spells (Michael Joseph, 1987); Arky Types (Methuen, 1987, with Michelene Wandor); Three Times Table (Chatto, 1990); Home Truths (Chatto, 1993); Women Fly When Men Aren’t Watching (Virago, 1993); Angel and Me (Cassells, 1995); Angel Maker (Henry Holt, 1996); Brittle Joys (Virago 1999); On Becoming a Fairy Godmother (Maia Press, 2003); Far North and Other Dark Tales (Maia Press, 2008); and The Book of Silence (Granta, 2008).

MICHAEL SYMMONS ROBERTS

5.45 pm in IAS MR2/3 on
Tuesday 10th March 2009

Michael Symmons Roberts – in conversation with Paul Farley
A reading, and a conversation on the nature of collaboration, with celebrated poet, novelist and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts.
‘Raising Sparks is as dark as Mussorgsky, as awesome as Akhmatova. MacMillan makes Roberts' words flow as naturally as psalm-pointing. One moment he is as desolate as Rilke, the next as subtle as Sappho or a Tang dynasty poem… the effect is hypnotising.’
The Independent - Roderic Dunnett

Photo of Michael Symmons Roberts Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Lancashire. Following a career as a radio producer for the BBC – he was Executive Producer and Head of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics – he has published a number of award winning volumes of poetry and prose.

His 4th book of poetry – ‘Corpus’ – was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for best collection, and the Griffin International Prize. He has previously received the Society of Authors’ Gregory Award for British poets under 30, the K Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for his 2001 collection ‘Burning Babylon’.

His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, a song cycle and a new opera for the Welsh National Opera. His work for radio includes ‘A Fearful Symmetry’ - for Radio 4 - which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and ‘Last Words’ commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. His first novel – Patrick’s Alphabet – was published by Jonathan Cape in 2006, and his new novel – Breath – is just out. He teaches at the Writing School of Manchester Metropolitan University, and is the author of ‘The Write Kit’ a DVD creative writing toolkit for schoolteachers.

ADAPTING THE INFERNO

Thursday 1st November 2007
6pm Bowland SCR

Two of the finest modern versions of Dante’s Inferno have been written by two of our finest contemporary poets: Ciaran Carson and Sean O’Brien. Both poets will be reading from their respective translations and talking about the issues they faced when rendering the Inferno into English. This is the first time both poets have presented their work together.

Photo of Ciaran Carson

Ciaran Carson

Poet and novelist Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1948. His collections of poetry include The Irish for No (1987), winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award; Belfast Confetti (1990), which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry; and First Language: Poems (1993), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. His prose includes The Star Factory (1997) and Fishing for Amber (1999). His most recent novel, Shamrock Tea (2001), explores themes present in Jan van Eyck's painting The Arnolfini Marriage. His translation of Dante's Inferno was published in November 2002. His most recent collection is Breaking News (2003), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year). Ciaran is also an accomplished musician, and is the author of Last Night's Fun: About Time, Food and Music (1996), a study of Irish traditional music. He lives in Belfast, where he is Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queens University.

Photo of Sean O'Brien

Sean O'Brien

Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London and grew up in Hull. He was co-founder of the literary magazine The Printer's Devil and contributes reviews to newspapers and magazines including the Sunday Times and the Times Literary Supplement. A regular broadcaster on radio and television, his poetry collections include The Indoor Park (1983), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, The Frighteners (1987), HMS Glasshouse (1991), and Ghost Train (1995), which won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year), as did Downriver (2001), making him the first poet to have won this prize twice. Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976-2001 was published in 2002. Inferno, his verse version of Dante's Inferno, was published in 2006 and a new poetry collection, The Drowned Book, in 2007. He is the author of a collection of essays about contemporary poetry, The Deregulated Muse: Essays on Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (1998) and edited the anthology The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (1998). He was awarded the E. M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993. His plays include Laughter When We're Dead, a political tragedy in verse, produced at Live Theatre in 2000 and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 2001; Keepers of the Flame, a verse play set in the 1930s and 1990s about poetry and Fascism, staged at Live Theatre in association with the RSC in 2003; and To Encourage the Others, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004. The Birds, his new verse version of Aristophanes' Birds, was commissioned by the National Theatre in London, first staged at the Lyttelton Theatre in 2002 and revived by Threeoverden theatre company in a tour of North East England in 2006. A collection of short stories is in preparation. He lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing.

The event will be chaired by Professor Paul Farley.

Monday 23rd April 2007

TOBY LITT

Toby Litt is the author of eight novels, including Beatniks: An English Road Movie (1997), a modern On the Road transposed to middle-England; Corpsing (2000), a thriller set in London's Soho; and Deadkidsongs (2001), a dark tale of childhood. Exhibitionism (2002), is a collection of short stories that explore the boundaries of sex and sexuality. A short story by Toby Litt was included in the anthology All Hail the New Puritans (2000), edited by Matt Thorne and Nicholas Blincoe, and he has edited The Outcry (2001), Henry James's last completed novel, for Penguin in the UK. His latest novel - just published - is Hospital (Hamish Hamilton, 2007).

Thursday 12th October 2006

JIM CRACE

Photo of Jim Crace Described by A.S Byatt as the most significant writer of fiction of the last ten years, as ‘a writer of hallucinatory skill’ by John Updike, Jim Crace is the author of several singular and striking novels, beginning with Continent in 1986, and including The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Quarantine (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1997), Being Dead (which won the Whitbread Novel Award) and Six. His next novel, The Pesthouse – which imagines a future mediaeval America – will be published by Picador in 2007: Jim will be reading from this new work, giving Lancaster a sneak preview. This is a not-to-be-missed opportunity.

Thursday 19th October 2006

SARAH HALL

Photo of Sarah Hall Sarah Hall’s most recent novel, The Electric Michaelangelo, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Set in an early twentieth-century Morecambe and Coney Island – ‘love, loss, and tattooing’ – the book perhaps reflects her own travels: after a childhood in Cumbria, she has lived in North Carolina, and is now based back in Carlisle. Her first novel, Haweswater (Faber and Faber, 2002), was set in the Cumbrian farming community of the 1930s, under threat from the municipal demands for water in the distant cities. Described as ‘a writer of heart-stopping genius’ by the Guardian, she is currently finishing her third novel.