Poetry Reading

David Herd is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent and a co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales. His new collection, Walk Song, weaves in and out of the Refugee Tales project. Addressing the environments contemporary politics has made, including the border and its hostilities, the poems set out the need for a language of welcome. Through its exploration of landscape and politics, friendship and movement, the book builds, across a series of poetic sequences, towards action and hope.

David is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose. Through, published in 2016, was a Book of the Year in The Herald newspaper. His 2012 collection, All Just, was described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as "one of the few truly necessary works of poetry written on either side of the Atlantic in the past decade".

Peter Gizzi is an acclaimed American poet, editor, and critic. His recent books include, Now It's Dark (Wesleyan, 2020), Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2020), and Archeophonics (Finalist for the National Book Award, Wesleyan, 2016).

Peter has twice been the recipient of The Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Cambridge. He is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"Gizzi's poetry is an example of how a poet's total tonal attention can disclose new orders of sensation and meaning. His beautiful lines are full of deft archival allusion."

Ben Lerner, American poet, novelist and critic