'Redgrove's Life',

Open Mic Event

Contact: www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/fortnight/?id=7658

'Redgrove's Life', with Penelope Shuttle, Katrina Naomi, Pascale Petit & Alan Brownjohn

A real (and seriously unmissable) poetry-world celebration of one of the twentieth century's most significant English poets - a sequence of readings-from and responses-to Redgrove poems by leading poets who knew him and who are influenced by his life's work.

Peter Redgrove
From 'The Collector' (Routledge, 1959) through over forty books of poetry to 'Sheen' (Stride) in 2003, the year of his death, Peter Redgrove created one of the deepest and most distinctive bodies of work in 20c English poetry. With the publication this year of his Collected Poems (ed. Neil Roberts) and Roberts' biography, 'A Lucid Dreamer: The Life of Peter Redgrove' (both Cape, 2012), poets who knew Redgrove and his poetry gather at the Troubadour to celebrate his life and work:

Alan Brownjohn
Alan Brownjohn (latest collection, 'Ludbrooke and Others', 2010) had his first collection published in 1954 and participated, like Peter Redgrove, in Philip Hobsbaum's seminal Group.

Pascale Petit
Pascale Petit was Poetry Editor at Poetry London for 15 years - her five collections, including 'What the Water Gave Me: Poems for Frida Kahlo' (Seren), have been awarded, & shortlisted for many major prizes, and Les Murray has singled out her unequalled 'powerful, mythic imagination...'

Katrina Naomi
Katrina Naomi is from Margate and lives in London, was first writer-in-residence at the Bronte Parsonage Museum and is working towards a PhD on violence in poetry - her 2009 collection 'The Girl With The Cactus Handshake' was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award.

Penelope Shuttle
Penelope Shuttle is Peter Redgrove's widow - her 2006 collection, 'Redgrove's Wife', was short-listed for Forward Best Collection and T.S. Eliot prizes; 'Sandgrain and Hourglass' (Bloodaxe, 2010) was a PBS Recommendation, and 'Unsent: New & Selected Poems', is forthcoming from Bloodaxe.

- plus open-mic in first half, one poem each, max. 25 lines on first-come basis, register when doors open at 7.40 pm

Price: £7.00 / £6.00

Time: 7:40 for 8:00pm