GRAHAM'S BLOG

Dear Poetry Friends I have been concentrating, this summer, on the return of live poetry events, so this first newsletter since May (the first of two for September) is to tell you about live lecture-performances-with-readings this coming week: in Taunton … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends Several of you have written to me over the last year of online lectures and poetry concerts to say that you are still catching up with a backlog of them! To make time for you to watch … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends DUE FOR RELEASE ON 15 APRIL 2021 EMILY DICKINSON – NEW ONLINE LECTURE BOOKING FROM TODAY Already at the age of 25, though lively, funny and good company, Emily Dickinson would not ‘go from home unless emergency … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends      POETRY CONCERT TWO This second concert in the new 2021 series celebrates two centenaries before the interval. The ‘symphonic poem’ opener, ‘A Prayer For My Daughter’, comes from W B Yeats’s 1921 collection, Michael Robartes and the … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends JOHN KEATS 200 – NEW ONLINE LECTURE BOOKING FROM TODAY In the face of never-ending challenges, Keats was fearlessly creative on the page. Dead at 25, his sonnets can stand alongside Shakespeare’s, his poems tread every inch … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends Ever since I discovered Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and William J Claxton’s Half-Hours With Great Composers about 65 years ago, I have had a feeling that it might be possible to put them together. This first Poetry Concert … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends SHAKESPEARE THE POET – THE NEW ONLINE LECTUREBOOKING FROM TODAY, FOR RELEASE ON 13 DECEMBER Shakespeare’s long poems, sonnets, and aria-like moments in the plays Take the most recently discovered portrait of him and look into his … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends 15 NOVEMBER 2020 – THE NEW ONLINE LECTUREAVAILABLE 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 … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends 20 OCTOBER 2020 – THE NEW ONLINE LECTUREAVAILABLE FROM TODAY 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 … Read More

Dear Poetry Friends 23 SEPTEMBER 2020 – THE NEW ONLINE LECTUREBOOKING OPEN NOW Born as he was in 1572, John Donne was an Elizabethan, but as far as poetic fashion and convention went, young Donne from the word ‘go’ busied … Read More