Free tickets! See Anne Michaels deliver the Wanda Barford Memorial Lecture at the RSA
Join the Royal Society of Literature on Monday 20 May at 7pm for an unmissable evening with novelist and poet Anne Michaels whose books are translated into more than fifty languages and have won multiple awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.
The Wanda Barford Memorial Poetry Lecture: Nothing Enrages The Tyrant More Than Hope: The Poem As Witness
‘Every poem is a poem of witness. Every poem, a form of rescue – from amnesia of every sort, from every kind of disregard and indifference. The hope of poems that witness war and political oppression is the assertion of justice spoken, spit in the eye of the oppressor, a message left for the others. And poems witness tyrannies less visible – illness, grief, shame, regret, terror, error, doubt. And others still, witness love that cannot wait – an entire life passes in a moment.
The poem says: precisely in the places where we feel most abandoned, we are not alone. No other public utterance so effectively names those places in us, and makes, in its precision, such ample space for both writer and reader. Here, the poem says, exactly in the place of dispossession – by a tyrant, by history, by a plan or policing, by chance, by time, by desire, by longing – exactly here and here and here, is the hope of being heard, and in that hope, solidarity. Every time we meet another’s gaze, here, in the poem, writer and reader, something is mended.’ – Anne Michaels
This lecture is in memory of musician and poet, Wanda Barford. There will be a reception following the talk.
Anne Michaels is a novelist and poet. Her books are translated into more than fifty languages and have won multiple awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Award for Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, and has served as Toronto’s Poet Laureate. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted as a feature film. Her most recent books include All We Saw, Infinite Gradation and Railtracks (co-written with John Berger). In 2020, her novel Fugitive Pieces was chosen as one of the BBC’s 100 Novels that Shaped the World.
Date: Monday 20 May 2024, 7-9 pm
Location: Royal Society of Arts, London
Cost: From £12
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Ticket Giveaway: The Royal Society of Literature have five pairs of free tickets to give away to NAWE members. To claim your free pair of tickets, email Amber Sale
amber.sale@rsliterature.org giving your name and email address. Tickets will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.