Guest Speakers (2012)

Friday 9 November

2pm Keynote Talk by David Morley

To open our conference, we are delighted to welcome David Morley, Professor of Writing at the University of Warwick.

An ecologist by background, David Morley’s poetry has won many awards. His most recent poetry collection Enchantment (Carcanet, 2010) was a Sunday Telegraph Book of the Year chosen by Jonathan Bate. The Invisible Kings (Carcanet, 2007) was a PBS Recommendation and TLS Book of the Year chosen by Les Murray. His next book, World’s Eye, is due from Carcanet in 2013 followed by his Selected Poems in 2014.

A leading international advocate of creative writing, David wrote The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing (2007) and co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing (2012).

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8pm A reading and talk by Ian McMillan

We are delighted to announce Ian McMillan as guest reader on the opening night of the NAWE Conference 2012.

Ian has been a poet, broadcaster, commentator and programme maker for over 20 years. One of NAWE's founding members, he has remained outstandingly committed to the work of the organization, and we look forward to welcoming him to our 25th Anniversary conference in York.

He’s been a regular on Newsnight Review, The Mark Radcliffe Show, The Today Programme, You & Yours, Any Questions, Quote Unquote, Have I Got News For You? and Just A Minute. Other radio includes comedy series Street and Lane written with Dave Sheasby.

‘the Shirley Bassey of performance poetry’ - TES

‘without doubt the funniest, quirkiest, sharpest presenter in the business’ - Sue Arnold in The Observer

'an inspiring figure, an encouraging & democratic spirit, a strong & popular poet and one of the funniest people in Britain’ - Poetry News

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Saturday 10 November

2pm A reading by Alan Bennett

We are delighted to welcome Alan Bennett to read and answer questions about his work.

Few authors achieve such critical acclaim whilst also establishing themselves as truly popular figures in the national consciousness. Alan Bennett occupies this special place, and has supported NAWE?from its earliest days.

Born in Leeds, Alan Bennett attended Oxford University where he studied History and performed with The Oxford Revue. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full time. His first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968 (and revived in York last year). Many television, stage and radio plays followed, together with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and many appearances as an actor.

His series of monologues, Talking Heads, was a major triumph on the BBC in 1988, with a further series following a decade later. Other popular successes include The Madness of George III and its film incarnation The Madness of King George, which received four Academy Award nominations. The History Boys won three Laurence Olivier Awards in 2005, with the author receiving the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.The History Boys won six Tony Awards on Broadway, and a film version was released in 2006.

In 2008, Alan Bennett donated his entire archive of working papers, unpublished manuscripts, diaries and books to the Bodleian Library, stating that it was a gesture of thanks repaying a debt he felt he owed to the British welfare state that had given him educational opportunities which his humble family background would otherwise never have afforded.

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8pm A reading by Simon Armitage

As the concluding highlight of our Saturday programme, we are delighted to welcome Simon Armitage, one of the outstanding poets of his generation, with over a dozen acclaimed collections from Faber to his name. He is also novelist, playwright and broadcaster – not to mention lead singer in a band, The Scaremongers.

He has written for over a dozen television films, and with director Brian Hill pioneered the docu-musical format which led to such cult films as Drinking for England and Song Birds (screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006). In 1999 he was named the Millennium Poet and published the one-thousand line poem Killing Time.

Simon has taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and as a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2011 he was appointed Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield.

A BAFTA winner and recipient of an Ivor Novello Award for song-writing, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004 and awarded the CBE for services to poetry in 2010.

Vice President of the Poetry Society and Patron of the Arvon Foundation, he is currently an Artist in Residence at London's South Bank.

His most recent publication is Walking Home (Faber, 2012), an account of his travels as a ‘modern troubadour’ along the Pennine Way.

Simon will be available to sign books after the reading.