Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 4th January
Workshop, led by Jenny Lewis 7pm
Guest readings and open mic 8pm
Guest poet: Jenny Lewis
Workshop, led by Jenny Lewis 7pm
Guest readings and open mic 8pm
Guest poet: Jenny Lewis
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
£5 waged, £3 unwaged
£5 waged, £3 unwaged
Jenny
Lewis is a poet, playwright and songwriter who specialises in cross-arts
collaborations combining poetry with visual art, music and dance. Her first
collection, When I Became an Amazon
(Iron Press, 1996/ Bilingua, Russia, 2002) was dramatized, widely toured and
broadcast on BBC Woman’s Hour. Her recent collections are Fathom (2007) and Taking
Mesopotamia (2014) published by Oxford Poets/ Carcanet, and two pamphlets
in English and Arabic, with the Iraqi Poet, Adnan Al-Sayegh, Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq (2013) and
Singing for Inanna, (2014) both published
by Mulfran Press. Jenny has also had seven plays and poetry cycles produced at
major UK theatres including After
Gilgamesh a verse drama for Pegasus Theatre, Oxford and a major Arts Council-funded
programme of new writing, workshops and performances at the British Museum,
Iraqi Cultural Centre, Keats House and other venues. Jenny teaches poetry at
Oxford University, is a Core Writing Tutor at Pegasus Theatre, Oxford and a
Tutor for the Poetry School. In 2012 she was awarded a prestigious Hawthornden
Fellowship.
Five of the excellent reviews Taking Mesopotamia has received to date:
“[Taking Mesopotamia] is compulsory
reading, even for those who don’t normally read poetry: an eloquent rejoinder
to those who say poetry can’t, or shouldn’t, concern itself with public
matters.” Bernard O’Donoghue.
“Taking
Mesopotamia is a stunning collection, one that sticks to you like a burr after
you’ve read it. It is as if in writing it, Jenny Lewis has stumbled across one
of the marvels contained within the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of its groves
of jewels – and laid it out across the page for us to look at.” Laura Scott,
The North
“Jenny Lewis’ Taking Mesopotamia is a brilliantly conceived and
executed, very moving book…This is a modernist route – we will see more poetry
collections built on these lines.” Dilys Wood, Artemis Poetry
“[Taking Mesopotamia] is a lyrical collection of poetry, witness
statements, interviews, diary entries and reports that have been meticulously
researched…Lewis will take many on the search with her, such is the
overwhelming poignancy of the work, which is testimony that there is a place
for poetry in politics.” Jane Fraser, New Welsh Review
Taking Mesopotamia by Jenny Lewis (Carcanet) is a stunning collection
interweaving myth, history and poignant biography. The story of Lewis's father
(a Welsh officer in the Mesopotamia campaign in WW1) is offset against past and
present wars in Iraq, the history of Lewis's mining ancestors, and the ancient
Epic of Gilgamesh. Beautiful, intricate and humane.” The Poetry Society
