Colpitts Poetry

Nov 11, 2011 - George Szirtes

Alington House - £5/£3

Long overdue return to Colpitts of one of the most brilliant and important poets writing in English today. Born in Budapest, Szirtes came to England as a refugee in 1956. From The Slant Door (Secker & Warburg 1979, joint winner of the Faber Memorial Prize) through Reel (Bloodaxe 2004, winner of the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize) to Fortinbras at the Fishhouses (Bloodaxe 2010), his resonant, humane, formally wide-ranging poems pungently explore the tension arising from displacement and the loss of his earliest home and the consequent negotiation between a European sensibility and English culture. His extensive and much-praised translations of Hungarian poetry, fiction and drama include The Colonnade of Teeth: Twentieth Century Hungarian Poetry (Bloodaxe 1996), co-edited with György Gömöri, and The Night of Akhenaton: Selected Poems of Ágnes Nemes Nagy (Bloodaxe 2004).

 

 

‘... this is the work of a truly great poet … If you don’t know Szirtes’s work, you had better start here.’ (Andy Croft, Morning Star, on New and Collected Poems, Bloodaxe 2008)

 

‘The translations by George Szirtes are out of this world.’ (Michael Hofmann, TLS, on Zsuzsa Rakovszky, New Life, OUP 1994, winner of the European Poetry Translation Prize)

 

Friday 16th December - Christmas Party! 

 

The party to end all parties! Come and join us to celebrate a memorable year for Colpitts and encourage us into 2012. Attractions include an open-mic session (please bring one poem to read, yours or another’s), live music, free food and liquid refreshments, and, of course, the ever-famous Dead Poets competition (come dressed as one and read one of theirs – prize for the best!).

 

Admission £3.00 - Free drinks and food

 

 

 

Oct 2, 2011 - We're Back!

Hi We're struggling - but we're still here! We're at Beamish as part of the Durham BookFest on October 2nd and are putting the final touches to the programme for the Autumn. Check back here or on Facebook for details

Jun 10, 2011 - Summer Break

We're on a Summer Break now and although future funding is still uncertain, we have high hopes of returning in October. We'll keep you posted!

May 4, 2011 - A Summer Book: Poetry Writing Workshops

Alington House: five fortnightly sessions, Wednesdays 7–9 p.m. from 4 May

In these sessions you’ll write, read and talk about summer poems. What’s
a good form for a summer poem? What’s it about? You’ll look and listen
to summer in various ways – and you may like to lay down a small summer
book of your own. The course is full of practical advice and is open to
everyone, no matter how little or large your own experience of poetry
may be.

Prices: £53, £41, £35. Sessions open to all. Bookings (possible even if the
course has already started) via website: www.poetryschool.com

In association with The Poetry School

Tutor: Gillian Allnutt

 

Jan 1, 2011 - We're Back!

Hi

We're struggling - but we're still here!

We're at Beamish as part of the Durham Bookfest on October 2nd and are putting the final touches to the programme for the Autumn.

 

Check back here or on Facebook  for details 

Dec 18, 2010 - Happy Christmas!

We're taking our seasonal break now but plan to be back in the New Year with another programme of excellent poetry!

 In the meantime, a very Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone!

 

Colpitts Poetry

Dec 17, 2010 - Christmas Party

8 p.m. Alington House, 4 North Bailey. Admission free.

Our usual night of fun, food and drink with Colpitts's famous Dead Poets Competition (come dressed as one and read one of theirs  prize for the best!), live music and poetry. Wear your glad rags or your sad rags and celebrate with us! Refreshments.

Nov 6, 2010 - Two Forthcoming Durham Events

Hi All

Although these aren't Colpitts events, we're delighted to help our friends and colleagues at the University by promoting them:

( I should point out that the contact for the first event is Another Simon James... ;-)

* 6 November : Experiencing the Future: Time, Consciousness and Memory :PG20, Pemberton Building, Palace Green




This interdisciplinary workshop will see research by
literary critics, psychologists and philosophers address the ways in which the
future is 'experienced' in the present and our future experiences are
shaped by the memory of our past. Past experience moulds behaviour and
future expectations; anticipation and imagining of the future are
governed by memory. The creation of narrative selves and memory as an
act of volition are a shared research interest; also shared is a
concern with memory, especially childhood memory, and its relationship to
the future in psychological, philosophical and literary discourses; as
well as episodic memory, bodily memory, emotional memory, writing as
memory, life history, and nostalgia. The predication of a future
self is reliant on memory; to imagine the future is to place one's self in
time.

This workshop seeks to map a path from memory and experience to
the future and future possibility, and will conclude with a poetry
reading by prize-winning writer Ruth Padel. It is intended to be of
interest to researchers in a range of subjects, and is free to register:
please

contact s.j.james@durham.ac.uk.





Experiencing the Future:

Time, Consciousness and Memory

November 6th, Pemberton Building, Palace Green, Durham



11.00 - 11.15 Welcome

11.15 - 12.00 Dan Hutto, 'Looking Ahead: Narrative and
Understanding Reasons'

12.15 - 13.00 Jonathan Lowe, 'Is it Possible to Experience
an Event Before it Has Happened?'

14.00 - 14.45 Patricia Waugh, 'In and Out of Time: Nostalgia
and the Future Anterior in Modern Fiction'

15.00 - 15.45 Charles Fernyhough, ,The Sunny Never-Never:
Experiencing the Past and Future in Childhood'

16.20 - 17.20 Ruth Padel, 'Poetry Reading: Memory and
Experience'

17.30 - 18.00 Round Table: 'Experiencing the Future'



http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/events/thematic/experiencing_the_future/


* November 11th - Vane Tempest Room of the Durham Students Union 7.30 pm Catherine Smith Admsision £1.00 ( Durham University Poetry Society)

Catherine Smith’s first short poetry collection, The New Bride (Smith/Doorstop), was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, 2001. Her first full-length collection, The Butcher’s Hands (Smith/Doorstop), was a PBS Recommendation and was short-listed for the Aldeburgh/Jerwood Prize, 2004. In 2004 she was voted one of Mslexia’s ‘Top Ten UK Women Poets’ and included in the PBS/Arts Council ‘Next Generation’ promotion. Her latest collection, Lip (Smith/Doorstop), was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, 2008.

She also writes short fiction and radio drama and teaches for the University of Sussex, Vardean College in Brighton and the Arvon Foundation. Her first short fiction collection is due out from Speechbubble Books in November 2010. She has adapted three of her short stories for a stage performance, Weight. She is working on her next poetry collection and a novel.

http://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/catherine-smith-six-poems/