Seven Olympians

4  Pushkin

Pushkin, in the West thanks to Tchaikovsky, is revered for Eugene Onegin, a verse novel of romantic drama with an ingenious 14-line rhyming stanza he created for it. But there are also song-like poems, a chamber epic with a vast backdrop, ‘The Gypsies’, and his swan-song masterpiece rewriting of a legend, ‘The Bronze Horseman’.  “Thank you for a sensational evening of Pushkin – a great performance” (Sue Hicks, at Pushkin Night in Farnham)

5  Baudelaire

Baudelaire is an exhilarating poet of the sea-voyage, the love-song, the French capital. To read him is to be instantly young, a champion bourgeois-baiting Frenchman hungry to paint the hidden faces of the Paris he dubbed a ‘swarming city, city full of dreams’.   “I was enthralled by Graham’s Baudelaire. He drew the listener in with such skill that I was totally at ease with Baudelaire’s highly unique style”.  (Meg Depla-Lake, Baudelaire Night, Lewes)

6  Emily Dickinson

Already at the age of 25, though lively, funny and good company, Dickinson would not ‘go from home unless emergency leads me by the hand’. The Dickinson trail leads to grief in love, the shadow of her public father, cosmic mysteries, the triumph of personal choice, and 1775 poems found stitched in bundles in a drawer.  “A really excellent evening. People were rapt, attentive and enthusiastic”.  (Liza Bingley Miller at Emily Dickinson Night in York)

7  Neruda

Thanks to Il Postino, the picture many of us have of Neruda’s life is that he was on Capri in 1952 with his Mathilde, to whom his love poetry is as open-hearted as it is confessional to the reader, while his political nerve is internationally inspiring.  “We left buzzing with delight and enormously stimulated to read more of Neruda’s work. Please do come back with the six other Olympians!” (Jane Hole, at Neruda Night in Taunton)