I put this to Michael Schmidt, who said, "Manchester and Cambridge too!". The International Anthony Burgess Foundation said yes by return of email; Makaronic.ch offered a subsidy for the Geneva event and Creative Scotland funded most of the tour. Syracuse University abroad offered the use of its new villa on the edge of the River Ill in Strasbourg. Cambridge thought about it over the long vac, so that’s perhaps for another time.
The first leg of the world tour will thus be 1 November Manchester, followed by 3 November London, 31 January Geneva, 1 February Strasbourg and 15 February the Iota Gallery, Glasgow.
We’re billed as 'the Last Men on Mercury'; each evening will start off with Edwin Morgan's 'First Men on Mercury', and at each venue there will be a guest poet or even two: Lucy Burnett in Manchester, Hannah Lowe and Dorothy LeHane in London, Peter Manson in Glasgow...
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| Peter McCarey |
The point, apart from the pleasure of working in such fine company, is in the exchange. Iain and I, in our separate spheres, have got used to reading to audiences who are not necessarily fully at ease in English, and it will be good to have a little less explaining to do. For Creative Scotland, the four of us are European cultural ambassadors – difficult in poetry, which of all the arts is the most closely bound up in its own grammar. Not that foreign language skills are lacking in this particular crew.
More immediate should be the exchange among the poets and the audience. The four of us have never read together, and I’d expect a fair amount of crosstalk in theme and technique. In terms of the Beatles it should approximate to John, Paul, two Georges and no Ringo. We’ll figure out on the night who’s which. With 12-15 minutes for each of five or six poets it will be a fairly intense set of events. I’ll certainly be adjusting my playlist in the light of what the others read and how light or heavy the atmosphere seems to be on the night. Michael Schmidt will introduce us on the first night, in Manchester. We’d better behave.
The tour begins on 1st November at 6:30pm, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester. Tickets £5/£3 on the door. For more information, please contact events@anthonyburgess.org.
The Carcanet Blog Sale
Every week on the blog, we offer 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors.
This week, we're offering 25% off the latest title by each of the touring authors! So that means...
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