University of Cambridge Contemporary Research Group

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Clare Hall Literary Talks: Rachel Calder, Literary Agent 20 June

You are invited to a talk by Rachel Calder, Literary Agent

http://www.sayleliteraryagency.com/

She will talk about the history of her agency (founded in 1896 by J. B Pinker) and about the role of literary agents today.

Fri. 20 June, 6 pm

West Court, Clare Hall, Herschel Road, CB3 9AL

All welcome. Wine will be served.

You are welcome to pass on this invitation to anyone else who might be interested.

Next year, we plan to host talks and readings by Christine Koning, Susan Sellers, Angela Leighton, Ian Patterson, Simon Jarvis and others tbc.

Poetry Reading: Vidyan Ravinthiran (Friday 25th April)

Vidyan Ravinthiran, Keasbey Research Fellow at Selwyn College, will read
from his first collection, Grun-tu-molani (Bloodaxe, 2014). Wine will be
served.

Date: Friday 25th April
Time: 6pm
Venue: Master’s Lodgings, Selwyn College
RSVP: if you would like to reserve a place, please email
vr244@cam.ac.uk.

Vidyan’s poems have been anthologised several times, published as a
pamphlet and have appeared in a range of magazines which include The
Times Literary Supplement, PN Review and Poetry Review.

‘Gripping is not a word you usually associate with poetry, but Vidyan
Ravinthiran’s poems are precisely that, and they seldom let go. They are
full of surprising turns (and turns of phrase), and their humour can
make you squirm, as humour should… A ferocious intelligence is at work
in these poems, whose stylish armoured exterior reflects sometimes a
literary scholar and sometimes a displaced person; sometimes
contemporary Britain and sometimes ancient Sri Lanka’ – Arvind Krishna
Mehrotra.

Marc Atkins and Rod Mengham reading in Cambridge: Tuesday 8 April

 

Still /movin/g – Launch and Reading*

Tuesday 8th April 2014

7.00 pm, Judith E Wilson Drama Studio, Faculty of English, University of

Cambridge.

All welcome – free entry

 

Veer Books will launch the new book by* Marc Atkins* and *Rod Mengham*,

with readings by both**Marc and Rod.

 

<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/Veer058>

 

/*STILL Moving*/

<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/Veer_Publications/Veer058>

Veer Publication 058 [ISBN: 978-1-907088-64-3]

 

‘For Rod Mengham and Marc Atkins, cracking mirrors and counter-mirrors

are not only a frontier between two worlds, they represent a systematic

quest for desire, a haunted visual trope leaping towards an elsewhere as

threatening as it is seducing, setting out to explore “the rear view of

historical convergence”, carefully recording instances in which the

conjunctions, collisions and chiaroscuro of memory and fantasy take us

beyond the scope of the thinkable and the imaginable.’ (Michel Delville)

 

Design by Vaughan Oliver and Marc Atkins.

A4 landscape size. 80 pages. Colour and B&W. March 2014.

 

Marc Atkins is an English artist, photographer, filmmaker and writer.

Marc has lived and worked for many years in London, but has also spend

extended periods of time in Rome, Detroit, New York, Warsaw and Paris.

Previous publications include /The Prism Walls/ (Contraband), /Logic of

the Stairwell/(Shearsman), /The Teratologists/ (panoptika),

/Thirteen/ (Do-Not Press), /Warszawa/ [texts by T. Pióro & A. Sosnowski]

(Wig-press), /Faces of Mathematics/(panoptika), and /Liquid City/ [text

by Iain Sinclair] (Reaktion). Atkins has presented his work and ideas on

the image at venues such as the Royal Academy, Royal College of Art, UEL

School of Architecture, Instytut Mikołowski, Poland, The Photographers

Gallery, and the University of Liège.

 

Rod Mengham is Reader in Modern English Literature at Cambridge

University and Curator of Works of Art at Jesus College, Cambridge.  He

has published monographs and edited collections of essays on nineteenth

and twentieth century fiction, violence and avant-garde art, the 1940s,

contemporary poetry; anthologies /Altered State: the New Polish

Poetry/ [ed. Mengham, Pioro, Szymor] (2003), /Vanishing Points: New

Modernist Poems/ [ed. Kinsella, Mengham](2005); poetry, including

/Unsung: New and Selected Poems/, (2001), /Diving Tower/ (2006),

/Parleys and Skirmishes/ (2007), /Bell Book/ (2012) and /The

Understory/ (2014). He has also curated numerous exhibitions, most

recently ‘Sculpture in the Close 2013’ [Miroslaw Balka, Theaster Gates,

Harland Miller, Damian Ortega, Doris Salcedo].

 

Robin Robertson reading: 12 March

ROBIN ROBERTSON

Weds 12th March, 6.15

Trinity Old Combination Room

 

Robin Robertson’s work has been described as pitching ‘the power and

wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human’.

Although human presence is frequently surreal and dislocated, it remains

at the heart of his work. Robertson is a poet who finds song in silence,

hope in a retreat into the ‘homelessness’ of the wild, all in a

meticulously exact language, described as “simultaneously spare and

ample”.

 

He is the first poet to have won all three categories in the Forward

Prize: Best First Collection for his 1997 debut A Painted Field, Best

Collection for Swithering in 2006, and Best Single Poem for ‘At Roane

Head’ from 2010’s The Wrecking Light. His most recent collection is Hill

of Doors, described by The Guardian as ‘a collection of flinty beauty’.

He lives in London and is fiction and poetry editor for Jonathan Cape.

TRINITY LITERARY SOCIETY POETRY READINGS – Michael Longley & Don Paterson (5 March), Robin Robertson (12 March)

We are excited to announce that Trinity Literary Society will be hosting
two poetry readings this term by Michael Longley and Don Paterson (5th
March) and Robin Robertson (12th March), both at 6.15 in the OCR.

MICHAEL LONGLEY and DON PATERSON, Weds 5th March, 6.15 Trinity OCR

Described by Seamus Heaney as "a keeper of the artistic estate, a
custodian of griefs and wonders", Michael Longley's work has handled
subjects as diverse as Homeric literature, the landscape of
Carrigskeewaun, jazz and the politics of Northern Ireland over a span of
nearly fifty years. Praised for his formal power, and 'meticulous,
unpretentious technique', his most recent collection, A Hundred Doors,
won the Poetry Now Award in September 2012, and has been described as
displaying 'proof in the continuity of poetic language with the world'.

His other collections include The Echo Gate (1979), Gorse Fires (1991)
which won the Whitbread Poetry Prize, and The Weather in Japan (2000),
awarded both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. He received
the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and was made a CBE in the 2010
Birthday Honours.

Named one of the Poetry Society's 'New Generation Poets' in 1994, Don
Paterson's work has been praised for combining "postmodern playfulness
with a sense of yearning for the transcendental". Paterson has said he
finds truth not in beauty but in style, and his writing - from the towns
and empty football pitches of his early work to the more inward-facing
elegies of recent collections - mixes the colloquial with the erudite to
create a sharp and distinctive voice.

Since his 1993 Forward Prize-winning debut Nil Nil, he has published
several collections including God's Gift to Women (1997), which won the
T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and his Landing
Light (2003), which won both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread
Poetry Award. He was made OBE in 2008 and was awarded the Queen's Gold
Medal for Poetry in 2010. He currently teaches at the school of English
at the University of St Andrews and is poetry editor for Picador.

---

ROBIN ROBERTSON, Weds 12th March, 6.15, Trinity Old Combination Room

Robin Robertson's work has been described as pitching 'the power and
wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human'.
Although human presence is frequently surreal and dislocated, it remains
at the heart of his work. Robertson is a poet who finds song in silence,
hope in a retreat into the 'homelessness' of the wild, all in a
meticulously exact language, described as "simultaneously spare and
ample".

He is the first poet to have won all three categories in the Forward
Prize: Best First Collection for his 1997 debut A Painted Field, Best
Collection for Swithering in 2006, and Best Single Poem for 'At Roane
Head' from 2010's The Wrecking Light. His most recent collection is Hill
of Doors, described by the Guardian as 'a collection of flinty beauty'.
He lives in London and is fiction and poetry editor for Jonathan Cape.

 

Parnell Lecture 25th Feb: Clair Wills on contemporary Irish poetry

PARNELL LECTURE

Tuesday 25th February
5.15 p.m.
Cripps Theatre, Cripps Court, Magdalene College

CLAIR WILLS

‘Late Style Irish Style: Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Problem of
Belatedness’.

Clair Wills is Professor of Irish Literature at Queen Mary University of London and this year's Parnell Fellow, Magdalene College. Recent
publications include Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO (2009) and That
Neutral Island: A History of Ireland during the Second World War (2007).

Cripps Court is on the left fifty yards or so up Chesterton
Lane/Chesterton Road from the traffic lights at the foot of Castle Hill.
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