Dear Poetry Friends
NOVEMBER
LIVE
Saturday 23 November 2024, 7pm
St Mary’s Church, 2 Elsworthy Road, Primrose Hill, London NW3 3DU
REFLECTING DEEPLY IN AN AGE OF ANXIETY
a concert of piano music and poetry with Robin Rubenstein and Graham Fawcett
John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens (1891)
Robin Rubenstein
Graham Fawcett
To read how the idea of this concert came about, the names of composers and poets, and how to book tickets, go to www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/events
LIVE
Wednesday 27th November 2024, 630pm, Brendon Books, Taunton, Somerset – at the Taunton Literary Festival 2024
DANTE AND ME
tells the story of a life-changing coincidence of love-lives in Florence between 1273 and 1975 and how it led to Graham’s discovery of the poet of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri.
After three years spent living in Tuscany and working in Florence without having read a line of Dante, Graham moved to the French Catalan town of Cérét in the Eastern Pyrenees.
One afternoon at the end of Winter, he writes, “an American couple asked us to tea just out of town. There was a thunderstorm on. We went anyway. Later, as we left, the elderly husband handed me a book. “Read that”, he said. It was a paperback edition of Dante’s Inferno translated into English verse by John Ciardi.
I had not read a line of Dante before. It was like the storm breaking all over again. That book led to a life in which Dante has been presidential. I wish I could remember my benefactor’s name. But his wife was Grace, and the publisher Mentor. It set me reading and translating Dante’s Inferno. My prose version was completed in 1978. It was the beginning of my direct encounter of Dante. He has never gone away”.
Dante Alighieri is one of the chapters Graham has recently completed for a book-in-progress about his poetry life, Being There.
To book, go to https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/brendonbooks/graham-fawcett-dante-and-me/e-vlxmvm
Above image: Henry Holiday (1839-1927), Dante and Beatrice. 1883
If you are writing . . .
Graham continues to read, comment on, and give tutorials for typescripts of poetry and prose, including collections. Contact him if you would be interested in this for yourself or anyone else at grahamkfawcett@gmail.com .
“How grateful I am for your unfailing gift of wise counsel – whether it’s about a philosophy or the placing of a comma, you’ve been on to it. And never daunting, always friendly”. Patrick Coldstream (2021)
“Your work on my book taught me so much”. Celia Purcell (2022)
“A masterclass in line-breaks and word order”. Owen Gallagher (2022)
“Thank you again for your excellent feedback. It’s been a thrilling process having such attention paid to my work. I have recommended you to a very good friend who is preparing a poetry pamphlet for competitions”. Vishvantara (2024)
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JANUARY TO MARCH 2025
ONLINE
My Monday Afternoon Online Poetry Group will be meeting again for a new ten-week course starting in mid-January 2025.
If you would like to receive during November the latest news of the programme and availability of places, write to me at grahamkfawcett@gmail.com.
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RECORDINGS of fourteen single-poet lectures and two poetry concerts available in Graham’s informal online lecture series can all be booked via https://grahamfawcett.co.uk/events. Click on link here and then on the image.
All best wishes
Graham