‘The Shedding of Skins and Schemes: a voice of one’s own and the voices of others’
Each year, The Poetry Society commissions a new lecture given by a high profile poet of international standing. This year’s lecture will be given by award-winning poet and translator Jan Wagner.
Jan Wagner is the outstanding German poet of his generation. His lecture, delivered in English, is on influence and the exchange of poetic ideas across borders; of the teachers poets must find for themselves (and then distance themselves from again). Interspersed with readings of some of his own poems, Wagner’s lecture draws on poets such as Rimbaud, Heym and Brecht, Popa, Pound and Hughes, and the poet-translators who have carried their work between cultures.
Wagner’s collection Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees (Arc), translated by Iain Galbraith, won the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize 2015. He has translated into German poets including Armitage, MacNeice, Shapcott, Simic and Sweeney.
The lecture will also tour to Oxford and Liverpool, and is supported by the Goethe-Institut.
Tickets
Tickets are £10/£8 concessions, students and Poetry Society members.
Jan Wagner Image: Alberto Novelli, Villa Massimo
