Dear Poetry Friends
15 NOVEMBER 2020 – THE NEW ONLINE LECTURE
AVAILABLE FROM TODAY
W B Yeats, Ireland’s modern Orpheus of song, ballad, lyric and narrative – and a fount of energy for national renewal
Yeats sang in the name of an ancient Ireland. His passionate study of mysticism and the supernatural fired his active involvement in a movement for the revival of Celtic identity, a poetic currency of fairies, dreams and the melancholy of decay. He cherished folk-tales, celebrating them as vitally in his verse as the history of his own times . . . More on my Events Page at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/wbyeats
NOTES ON HOW TO WATCH AND LISTEN TO THE W B YEATS LECTURE
As the lecture has been recorded, you need no special equipment to view it, other than a computer or laptop.
The lecture does not go out at a particular time, and Zoom is not involved. Instead, it is available on YouTube at one click, accessible to everyone who books for it. Book any time from November 15 onwards and you will be sent, by return, links to the lecture which offer you the choice of either watching it on YouTube or listening to it as a downloadable audio podcast.
As you will see from the Yeats page, you do not need a PayPal account to book the lecture (£10), simply a debit or credit card which enables you to pass straight through the booking process as a Paypal guest. (Just click on the grey Pay By Debit Or Credit Card option bar at the foot of the first Paypal page).
DECEMBER 2020 ONLINE AND OTHER ADVANCE NEWS
The December online lecture will be on Shakespeare The Poet and will be released on December 13. Full details will appear on the website from November 16.
The current lockdown’s scheduled end on 2 December means that we again have to postpone our long-planned Akhmatova Night at Café Sladers in West Bay from November 27 until the new date of Friday 5 February 2021 at 730pm when we are very much hoping to be able to welcome a live audience again and when thorough attention will be paid to social distancing, safety and comfort. Café Sladers will then present my Tennyson Night on Friday 16 April 2021. Brendon Books in Taunton has invited me to return there on Monday 19 April 2021 to talk about that most April poet, Geoffrey Chaucer.
RECORDINGS IN THIS 2020 ONLINE SERIES ALSO AVAILABLE NOW
For details of the other lecture recordings available from this 2020 online lecture series, see the bottom of this newsletter.
TELLING OTHERS
And if you have friends who might be interested in receiving my newsletter each month, do point them in the direction of the Newsletter Sign Up feature on the Events page at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/events. They can view the present newsletter at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/blog
Do forward this newsletter to any friends and contacts who may be interested. If you would like to make someone a present of one of these talks, just let me have the contact details of the person you would like to receive it and then book your chosen talk in the usual way.
All best wishes
Graham
RECORDINGS IN THIS 2020 ONLINE SERIES AVAILABLE NOW
THOMAS HARDY Poet of virtuoso narratives on love, nature, the human journey, and how to handle the present
Famed, filmed and widely read for his novels, Thomas Hardy was actually always a poet who happened to write novels too. He started out as one as a young man, and then, in 1895, the second most important date in Hardy’s life for him and for us (1912 being the first) . . . More on Hardy at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/thomas-hardy
JOHN DONNE Supreme Metaphysical poet of love, adventure, reason, belief
‘No man is an island’, said Donne. A challenge to our fantasies of separateness. His declaration “Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail” has lost none of its thwack. His exciting fearlessness of invention electrifies the journey . . . More on Donne at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/johndonne-metaphysical-love-poet-2/
ON THE DONNE LECTURE
“Very inspiring. What is great about your talks is the almost urgent need, certainly in my case, to go back to the poems themselves at a deeper level, or even for the first time”. (Celia Purcell, London)
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Romantic and fantastic poet of the imagination
Coleridge was a magician of the word, an irresistible poet of nature and imagination, a wildly inventive writer . . .
More on Coleridge at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/coleridge-romantic-poetry-mariner-2
ON THE COLERIDGE LECTURE
“Your lectures seamlessly blend exposition with the poems. I’m off now to Kubla and the Mariner”. (Charles Porter, San Luis Obispo)
D H LAWRENCE, POET Poet of human and animal creatures, love, remembrance
This talk is for all of you who read and love poetry, whether or not you have yet discovered D H Lawrence as a poet and not only as the author of Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and other novels. . . More on Lawrence at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/dhlawrence-2
ON THE LAWRENCE LECTURE
“I must write and congratulate you on a superb lecture. I came away with a completely fresh view of Lawrence as a poet. I found your reading of ‘Snake’ an incredibly emotional experience – went and looked it up – and became more transfixed. . . I do hope the research and video gave you as much pleasure as it certainly did me, and I’m sure all your other viewers”. (Celia Purcell, London)
WALT WHITMAN Pioneer poet of love, humanity, nature, America, epiphany
Readers – and listeners – love Walt Whitman for his extraordinary musical gifts as a poet and for his invigorating wisdom which sheds light on our lives left, right and centre as though he had been passing our house and stopped to talk to us through the window.
More on Whitman at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/walt-whitman
ON THE WHITMAN LECTURE
“Bravo! Well done! A wonderful re-introduction to the life and art of Whitman, especially suggestive as to some contemporary influences on the development of his style. Your lecture reminded me repeatedly what a copious genius Whitman is/was ,- and has sent me straight off to try to write again (after feeling increasingly stale as this Covid thing has gone on.) And all beautifully written and delivered too. Thank you!” (Keith Chandler, Bridgnorth, Shropshire)
WORDSWORTH Revolutionary Romantic poet of childhood, nature, memory
On the page he is a man of elemental and fertile stamina: his vast autobiographical masterpiece The Prelude is one of the most beautiful, engrossing, accomplished, sustained, expansive and invigorating poems in our, or any other, language. . .
More on Wordsworth at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/williamwordsworth
ON THE WORDSWORTH LECTURE
“Feel that I’ve met Wordsworth both again and for the first time. School-Wordsworth I learnt by heart. Now he makes much more sense to me”.
(Susie Barrett, Devon – after Wordsworth Night in Taunton)
EDWARD THOMAS Poet of Adlestrop, nature and the War
Walter de la Mare said Thomas’s aim had been “to express the truth about himself and his reality”. This throws light on how poetry suddenly surfaced in him: it was there all the time, in the glorious pastoral eloquence of his prose in praise of place and nature.
More on Edward Thomas at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/edwardthomas
ON THE EDWARD THOMAS LECTURE
“Delivered very poignantly and emotionally. Rather than scratching the surface or providing a mere linear literary history, you seemed to enter into the head and mind-set of the poet. A tour de force”.
(Nicky Merry, Chichester – after Edward Thomas Night in West Bay, Dorset)
POETRY IS COMMUNICATION Poems that connect with us
Graham invites his audience to live and re-live their own personal relationship with all the poetry they have ever read and listened to since they were old enough to find pleasure and meaning in it, so that they go away at the end not only remembering what has always communicated and meant so much to them but cherishing its depths afresh, even as though for the first time.
More on Poetry Is Communication at https://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/event/poetryiscommunication
ON THE POETRY IS COMMUNICATION LECTURE
“I finally managed to sit down and listen to Poetry is Communication (my own delay) and enjoyed it very much indeed. It is wonderful, for a start, to have all that poetry read to one, but then to have your wise and imaginative thought linking it all together is a stimulating and restorative blessing after a day of sadness for the world and personal fatigue and frustration brought on by internet incompetence!” (Brenda Herbert, London)