An Evening with Holly Hopkins

Open Mic Event

Website: https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/events/an-evening-with-holly-hopkins/

Our contemporary poetry reading series ‘Go to the poets, they will speak to thee’ is running throughout 2022, curated and hosted by poet Kim Moore. We will be listening to what poets have to say about our turbulent times, and how poetry can cross borders to challenge, delight and inspire us. Each event in the series is part reading, part open mic – and the theme of the open mic changes every month!

Perhaps more than any other poet, William Wordsworth changed our perception of the English landscape. For Wordsworth, a cliff could rise up like a ‘living thing’, and nature had the power to heal the mind. Our guest poet this month is Holly Hopkins, whose debut collection The English Summer gives us another unique perspective on the English landscape. This is an England of churches that may ‘slip their moorings in the night’, an England of 18th century follies and overcrowded urban bedsits, a transient England that can ‘unroll through the window of a train’ but also disappear without trace.

Our open mic theme this month then is an invitation to change our perception of landscape – your landscape can be real or imaginary, physical or emotional, rural or urban, completely surreal or rooted in place, a landscape of the mind or a landscape of the body. Please feel free to interpret this theme widely!

Open mic slots are limited and must be booked in advance.

Price: £5.00 / £0.00. (Limited free tickets available.)

Time: 7:30pm