Paris between the wars was a hotbed of radical female experience, with Gertrude Stein, HD and Mina Loy regrafting identity through the language of feminism and sexual politics. With poetry performed by Lisa Dwan and talks from Peggy Reynolds, Prue Chamberlain and Diana Souhami, be transported to the salons of the Parisian Left Bank as we celebrate these revolutionary women in their own words.
Poet in the City provides a dynamic platform for contemporary and classic poetry, curating imaginative events which bring poetry to life for a twenty-first century audience. Through our work, we have fostered an appetite for accessible, challenging and inspiring poetry performances.
Lisa Dwan is a world renowned Irish performer and director. She has worked extensively in theatre, film, and television, and is perhaps best known for her interpretations of Beckett. In 2012, she adapted, produced, and performed the critically acclaimed one-woman play Beside the Sea at the Southbank Centre. Dwan writes, presents, and lectures regularly on theatre, and culture, and has been commissioned to write a book on Beckett for Virago. She is artist in residence at the School of Art and Ballet at NYU and on an Atelier residency at Princeton University.
Peggy Reynolds is Professor of English Literature at Queen Mary University. Winner of the British Academy’s Rose Mary Crawshay Prize. She writes regularly for The Times and presents BBC Radio 4’s Adventures in Poetry.
Diana Souhami is a Whitbread award-winning English writer of biographies, short stories, plays, with a particular interest in the influence of the twentieth century lesbian. Her biography, Gertrude and Alice follows the relationship between Getrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, from their first meeting until Stein's death in 1946.
Prudence Chamberlain is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway University, London. Her book The Fourth Wave of Feminism: Affective Temporality (2017) was published by Palgrave Macmillan, while her articles on feminism can be found in Gender and Education and Social Movement Studies. She is currently working on her second book, Queer Troublemakers and the Poetics of Flippancy, which traces a lineage of identity politics and mischief, originating in the work of Gertrude Stein. Her co-written book of Disney poems House of Mouse was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in 2016, while Retroviral and Dirt Talk are forthcoming with Oystercatcher Press and Pyramid Press respectively.
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