Poet Laureate Library Tour comes to Cambridge University Library
As part of his tour to give readings in libraries across the UK, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will visit Cambridge University Library on 28th March.
Join the Poet Laureate and special guest Imtiaz Dharker, Cambridge University Library’s former poet-in-residence, to celebrate historic poetry archives in this unique free event live-streamed from the Rare Books Reading Room at the University Library.
Both poets will read a selection of their poems and will be joined in conversation by Cambridge University Librarian Dr Jessica Gardner, who previously worked on Armitage's papers at the Brotherton Library in Leeds.
Cambridge University Library is home to one of the world's great collections of poetry and features the archives of Siegfried Sassoon and Anne Stevenson as well as the archive of the Royal Society of Literature. The University's former students also include George Mpanga (George the Poet), Sylvia Plath and former Poet Laureate Ted Hughes among many other literary greats.
Each spring, for the next decade, Armitage will give readings across the UK; from the flagship libraries of the big cities to smaller libraries serving rural and remote communities. Using the alphabet as a compass, his journey will celebrate the library as one of the great and necessary institutions.
This special event will be live-streamed but will not be available following the event so make sure you book your spot. Copies of Armitage’s books of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Owl and the Nightingale are currently available to purchase from the University Library shop located in the Entrance Hall.
"It would have been easy to stream these events from my office or garden shed, but at a time when libraries are under threat and have been out of bounds during lockdown, reading from inside their physical structures feels like an act of solidarity - with books, with poetry, and with communities."
Simon Armitage
Simon Armitage was born and grew up in West Yorkshire and has won a huge array of awards for his poetry and writing. He has published over a dozen poetry collections, including Magnetic Field, and acclaimed medieval translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Owl and the Nightingale.
A regular broadcaster, Armitage presents the popular BBC Radio 4’s series The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed. He writes extensively for television and radio, most recently for BBC 2’s Where Did The World Go, A Pandemic Poem.
He became the Poet Laureate in 2019, succeeding Carol Ann Duffy.
Credit: Ayesha Dharker
Credit: Ayesha Dharker
Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and video film maker, awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014. Her six collections, all published by Bloodaxe Books, include Over the Moon and the latest, Luck is the Hook. Her poems have featured widely on BBC radio, television, the London Underground, Glasgow billboards and Mumbai buses.
She has had eleven solo exhibitions of drawings and also scripts and directs video films, many of them for non-government organisations working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children in India.
Armitage said: "My experience of reading and writing began in the village library where I grew up, then in the nearby town library, then in libraries at various places of study and teaching. For many people they are an invaluable aspect of everyday life, giving access not just to books but to services, learning, conversation and creative thinking."
The C to D Libraries Tour 2022 is kindly supported by the T.S. Eliot Foundation, Mark Pigott KBE, Faber & Faber and using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The tour launches in Chadderton Library, Oldham, one of the UK’s first Libraries of Sanctuary, and will visit a variety of libraries during the week, stopping in Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen), Clevedon, Colyton, Chatham and Clydebank.
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