Dannie Abse and Alan Jenkins discuss loss
Filed under: Poetry
Dannie Abse and Alan Jenkins discuss suffering and loss
THE T.S. ELIOT MEMORIAL LECTURE
Lachrymae rerum: writing about loss
Poetry, said Ted Hughes, derives from the place of ultimate suffering and decision. For Dannie Abse and Alan Jenkins, both writing in the face of loss and grief, this has been acutely true in recent years. Dannie Abse, our best-known and best-loved contemporary Welsh poet, reads both from Running Late, his latest collection of poetry, published last year, and from The Presence, a journal he has been keeping since his wife’s death in the summer of 2005. Alan Jenkins, Deputy Editor of the TLS, and last year the recipient of a Cholmondeley Award, reads from his collection A Shorter Life, which includes poems about his mother’s illness and death that have been described as ‘painful in their truthfulness to feeling’. Chaired by Maggie Gee
Recorded Monday 14 May 2007.
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