Graham Fawcett
writer, teacher, translator and broadcaster
e-mail: grahamkfawcett@gmail.com
telephone: 020 7405 3997
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Events and Courses Calendar
with Graham Fawcett
CLICK ON THE EVENT YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT
this calendar is usually updated every two or three days
2010
SUMMER INTO AUTUMN
Monday 6th September 2010, 615pm (supper with wine) for a 645pm start
The Book You Always
Meant to Read
fifteen monthly supper
lectures at St Olave's,
Hart Street, London EC3
(near Tower Hill)
on
Dante's Divine Comedy
Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
continuing on the first Monday of every month
except January (17th) and May (9th)
- no programme in August 2011
| More details coming shortly - watch this space |
NOW BOOKING - OR BUY AT THE DOOR ON THE NIGHT
Admission: £15 per head (includes hot food, with vegetarian option, and wine).
Catering by Sumo Salad - hot food and salads
If you would like to book in advance, make payment out to St Olave Churchwardens and send to: Phil Manning, Church Manager, St Olave Rectory, 8 Hart Street, London EC3R 7NB
Phil Manning may also be contacted at: sanctuaryinthecity@mac.com
Click here for a printable map (new window - Adobe Acrobat is required, which can be downloaded here)
Changes with Graham Fawcett A One-Day Poetry Writing Workshop at Dairy Cottage, Peper Harow
Please arrive any time from 1030 to 1045 Dairy Cottage and its immediate surroundings are ideal for a day's writing retreat. This Grade 2 original dairy of Peper Harow House has a small paved walled garden, an enclosed lawn and an area of parkland landscaped by Capability Brown down to the River Wey. PROGRAMME FOR THE DAY 1100 Reading by Graham on Changes, offering active ‘leads’ for your writing 1150 Break for coffee 1210 Guided and free writing session exploring those ‘leads’ 1320 Picnic lunch (please bring) 1415 Writing session in house and/or garden 1545 Tea 1610 Voluntary read-round and discussion 1700 End of day Please refer to www.peperharow.info/dc/DCdirect.doc for directions if planning to come by car (for Adobe Acrobat format map, go to www.peperharow.info/dc/DCphmaps.pdf). Train travellers please catch the 0915 train from London Waterloo to Farncombe station (arrives 0959) from where transport to (and, at the end of the day, from) the house will be provided for a small charge.
Cost £25 per person. Numbers are limited to 12, so early booking is advised. 6 places sold, 6 still available. |
--------------------------------PLEASE CUT AND PASTE FROM HERE -------------------------------------- Saturday 11th September 2010
Changes – a writing day with Graham Fawcett
(early booking advised as numbers are limited)
□ PLEASE TICK BOX: I’d like to enrol for Changes - a writing day with Graham Fawcett to be held at the Dairy Cottage, Peper Harow near Goldalming on Saturday 11th September 2010. I would like _____ tickets, and enclose a cheque for £25 per person which I understand does not include lunch. I will be travelling by car/by train (please delete whichever does not apply).
Please make your cheque payable to Graham Fawcett and send it with the completed booking form to Jill Hepple, 10 Sheen Common Road, Richmond, Surrey TW10 5BN. You will then be sent your ticket(s) for the day.
NAME(S):
POSTAL AND E-MAIL ADDRESSES:
TELEPHONE NUMBERS:
Saturday 18th September 2010, 1030am-445pm CHIPPING CAMPDEN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE POETRY PLACES 6 with Graham Fawcett
It was on a late summer day in September 1934 when, out on the latest in a succession of long country walks with Emily Hale – who was very important to him and had come over from America to stay with relatives in Chipping Campden – T S Eliot ventured off the road, walked down through the woods and found himself in the upper garden of the estate of a local manor house, Burnt Norton. The owners hadn’t invited him, he just arrived. No-one knows how long he and Emily stayed. That they were there at all is barely suggested by the poem, whose lines still resonate for us today not for any sense of tangible geography but from the gift, handed on, of an unseen presence in a landscape of the poetry’s own making.
In this the third in this popular series of Eliot Quartet location days, Graham Fawcett will seek to recreate the poet’s own experience of Burnt Norton the place, and point to clues in the poet’s life and work and his choice of moods and images, to help unravel the mysteries of the poem. The highlights of this late Summer day will be a specially arranged visit to the Burnt Norton gardens – now normally not open to the public – and a close reading, one by one spaced through the day, of the five ‘movements’ of the poem which Eliot realised later had been, and could become, the start of something greater, his Four Quartets. PLEASE CHECK TIMES AGAINST CURRENT DETAILS ON TRAIN ENQUIRY WEBSITE 0721 Recommended train leaves London Paddington for Moreton-in-Marsh (via Oxford) Come out of the station, turn left and then follow the road round to the right. At the junction, turn left and you will be in the centre of Moreton-in-Marsh. PLEASE CHECK TIMES AND STOP LOCATIONS AGAINST CURRENT BUS COMPANY WEBSITE DETAILS 0930 Recommended bus for Chipping Campden (Johnsons Coaches service numbers 21 or 22 – the Stratford-upon-Avon service) leaves the Corn Exchange, Moreton-in-Marsh.
1012 Bus arrives Chipping Camden Town Hall. Those coming by car will be glad to know that there is good parking in the town. From 1015 Meeting time in the Upper Room of the Town Hall for rail, bus and car travellers. 1030 Eliot’s Burnt Norton Day with Graham Fawcett begins in the Upper Room of the Town Hall, High Street, Chipping Campden. 1030-1125 Eliot’s Burnt Norton Day 1 with GF – the background to the writing of ‘Burnt Norton’, including a close reading of §1 of Eliot’s poem. 1130 Short walk along high street. 1135-1220 Specially arranged access to a local address (by kind permission of the present owner) which is often overlooked as a key feature of the story surrounding the writing of the poem. Eliot’s Burnt Norton Day 2 with GF. 1220 20-yard walk to The Lygon Arms for a pre-ordered lunch (menus, including a wide range of dishes ranging from £5 to £15, with many under £10, will be available in advance). 1230-1340 Lunch at The Lygon Arms. 1340 Set out on foot (a walk of less than a mile) or in cars to the Burnt Norton estate. 1355-1410 Arrive Burnt Norton, where we will have specially arranged access to the gardens – by kind permission of the Earl of Harrowby. 1415-1630 Eliot’s Burnt Norton Day 3 with GF in the grounds and gardens of Burnt Norton, including a close reading of §§2,3,4 and 5 of Eliot’s poem. The cost of Eliot’s Burnt Norton Day will be £40 for the teaching sessions (or £30* concessionary rate for 18 years & under, senior citizens, full-time students, unwaged - ES40 - and disabled) and will include the admission charge to the Burnt Norton gardens, but will exclude lunch, refreshments, and transport during the day. The nearest station is Moreton-in-Marsh, from where there is a bus service – its timetable available on the internet, see bus company names above - to Chipping Campden, our base for the day and where car-drivers should park. We will then walk (30 minutes) or take a local bus to the entrance to the estate. Please make your cheque, for £40 or £30 concessionary rate, payable to Graham Fawcett and send it with the completed booking form to him at 2 Harpur Mews, London WC1N 3PE. You will then be sent your ticket(s) for the day.
Enquiries to: Graham Fawcett on grahamkfawcett@googlemail.com or 0207 405 3997. Details of Graham Fawcett’s work, including the next East Coker and Little Gidding Days, are available at www.grahamfawcett.co.uk, where this event is also being publicised.
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Saturday 2nd October 2010, 10am-12noon
A BRIDGE JUST FAR ENOUGH a new late summer Saturday morning walk through Southwark's rich nook-and-cranny past of poetry, drama and prose
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Monday 4th October 2010, 615pm (supper with wine) for a 645pm start
NEW DANTE SERIES
The Book You Always Meant to Read
Dante's Divine Comedy
LECTURE 1
Dante's Inferno
Cantos I-VIII
the first of fourteen monthly
supper lectures at St Olave's,
Hart Street, London EC3
(near Tower Hill)
continuing on the first Monday of every month
except January (17th) and May (9th)
- no programme in August 2011
black and white illustration from the Inferno by Gustave Dore
| More details coming shortly - watch this space |
NOW BOOKING - OR BUY AT THE DOOR ON THE NIGHT
Admission: £15 per head (includes hot food, with vegetarian option, and wine).
Catering by Sumo Salad - hot food and salads
If you would like to book in advance, make payment out to St Olave Churchwardens and send to: Phil Manning, Church Manager, St Olave Rectory, 8 Hart Street, London EC3R 7NB
Phil Manning may also be contacted at: sanctuaryinthecity@mac.com
Click here for a printable map (new window - Adobe Acrobat is required, which can be downloaded here)
Saturday 9th October 2010, 0915-1515
| OPEN COUNTRY |
The launch of a brand new series combining fresh air, an invigorating walk and a good lunch with an exploration of the life, work and home ground of poets in the English countryside
|
STEEP, NEAR PETERSFIELD, HAMPSHIRE
The village of Steep, still far enough from Petersfield to be deep in the most breathtaking Hampshire countryside, was, understandably enough when you see it, the home, for ten of his ever-burgeoning writing years, of that all-too-often unsung hero of English nature praise prose turned - thanks to the timely encouragement of the young Robert Frost – poet of that England, Edward Thomas: “the land is wild”, he tells us in an early Steep poem, ‘Up in the Wind’, and, in another, he writes of how a local path
On this first relaxed walk in the new Open Country series, we will follow some of the paths Edward Thomas took, stopping here and there to read and listen to him while seeing, more or less unchanged, what he saw and marvelled at in the mind’s eye and then on the page.
The walk will last just over 3 hours including generous poetry stops, and will be at a gentle pace, quite a lot of it on the flat and with one 800m gradually steeping ascent through woodland and a 600m stiffish descent on a grassy chalk slope which has steps cut into it. Stout footwear and walking poles recommended.
Along the way we will drop in briefly on an unexpected place to find in the middle of nowhere on a country lane, the impressive and active workshop of a local furniture maker who became a leading member of the Arts and Crafts movement, Edward Barnsley. At the end of the walk, we are expected for lunch, in a rather lovely spot, at The Harrow, a country pub bristling with honours - in recognition of its food (“everything is home-made”), welcome, and both indoor and outdoor atmospheres – from the Good Food Guide 2010, Lonely Planet (“cosiest pub”, 2009), and the Good Pub Guide (“most unspoilt pub – 1996”, and nothing has altered it since).
The day will also feature a visit to Steep Church to see the Laurence Whistler windows commemorating the lives of Edward and Helen Thomas. Click here for further details and booking form Booking opens Wednesday 21st July 2010 Quotations from Edward Thomas's poetry are taken from Edward Thomas Collected Poems edited by R George Thomas, Faber, 2004 |
Saturday 16th October 2010
EAST COKER (NEAR YEOVIL) SOMERSET
POETRY PLACES 2
“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated . . .”
(T S Eliot, from ‘East Coker’, in Collected Poems 1909 -1962, faber & faber 1963)
ELIOT’S EAST COKER DAY 2010DAY EVENT WITH TAUGHT AND GUIDED SESSIONS
in East Coker (near Yeovil), Somerset
COMMENTS AFTER ELIOT'S EAST COKER DAY 2008
What a good day. I drove away from it feeling a bit like when you've seen a totally absorbing film and you can’t quite reconnect with the real world - or you want very much to connect what you've just experienced to the real world. Thanks so much for bringing that amazing work to such life - and death (!) - for us all.
Greta Stoddart
Thank you so much for the wonderful East Coker Day. It opened out my reading of Eliot in the best possible way & has given me much food for thought and for writing.
Pam Hope
Why did American poet T S Eliot choose this village in Somerset as the setting of East Coker, the second of his world-famous Four Quartets? Graham Fawcett recreates the atmospheres of the poem on location, explores Eliot’s choice of moods and images for this setting, and seeks to unravel the poem’s mysteries with the help not only of East Coker itself and the autumn day we’ll spend there but also clues in the poet’s life as he worked on the poem.
1045 Coffee at Helyar Arms. Pre-order lunch: fine menu from sandwiches to meals.
1100 Eliot’s East Coker 1 with GF at the Helyar Arms. The story of T S Eliot’s Somerset connections, of his Four Quartets and then of East Coker. Close reading of East Coker §1.
1210 Leave Helyar Arms and walk (5 mins) through the orchard to the church, St Michael and All Angels, the church of Eliot’s ancestors and where the poet’s ashes are buried and there is a corner dedicated to him.
1215-1325 Eliot’s East Coker 2 with GF in the church and churchyard. Close reading of East Coker §3.
1330-1430 Lunch at the Helyar. Eliot’s East Coker 3 with GF. Close reading of East Coker §3.
1430-1545 Eliot’s East Coker 4 with GF at the Helyar Arms. Close reading of East Coker §4 and 5.
1545 End of Eliot’s East Coker Day. Taxis or cars back to Yeovil stations.Your ticket for the day excludes refreshments, lunch, transport (the taxi ride in each direction for train travellers) and a £1 donation to church funds.
Enquiries to: 020 7405 3997 or grahamkfawcett@gmail.com
COMMENTS AFTER ELIOT’S EAST COKER DAY 2007
"Thanks so much for a colourful, enthusiastic and enlightening day of East Coker and T S Eliot's beginnings, much food for thought remains and now I feel more able to be in the poem and look around."
Michael Scott Byrne
"Thank you for such a great and thought-provoking day. It had tremendous depth in it – which Eliot would have appreciated - and I think it was really great for all the participants (myself included) who don’t get offered that kind of breadth of discussion or teaching so often. It was really inspiring."
Catherine Simmonds
"Many many thanks for a wonderful and illuminating day in East Coker. I am sure Eliot would have approved. Rarely do I ever get the chance to analyse a pome in such depth . .
James Crowden
Monday 1st November 2010, 615pm (supper with wine) for a 645pm start
NEW DANTE SERIES
The Book You Always Meant to Read
Dante's Divine Comedy
LECTURE 2
Dante's Inferno
Cantos IX-XV
the second of fourteen monthly
supper lectures at St Olave's,
Hart Street, London EC3
(near Tower Hill)
continuing on the first Monday of every month
except January (17th) and May (9th)
- no programme in August 2011
black and white illustration from the Inferno by Gustave Dore
| More details coming shortly - watch this space |
NOW BOOKING - OR BUY AT THE DOOR ON THE NIGHT
Admission: £15 per head (includes hot food, with vegetarian option, and wine).
Catering by Sumo Salad - hot food and salads
If you would like to book in advance, make payment out to St Olave Churchwardens and send to: Phil Manning, Church Manager, St Olave Rectory, 8 Hart Street, London EC3R 7NB
Phil Manning may also be contacted at: sanctuaryinthecity@mac.com
Click here for a printable map (new window - Adobe Acrobat is required, which can be downloaded here)
POETRY PLACES 5
ELIOT’S LITTLE GIDDING DAY
at Ferrar House, Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire
with Graham Fawcett
Saturday November 6th 2010, from 1000am for 1030am-430pm
What brought T S Eliot to the village of Little Gidding in 1936, and why, 6 years later, did he decide to make it the setting and presiding spirit of the fourth and last of his Four Quartets ? On location in Ferrar House and Little Gidding Church, Graham Fawcett will seek to recreate Eliot’s own experience of this place, and point to clues in the poet’s life and work and his choice of moods and images, to help unravel the mysteries of Eliot’s Little Gidding. Highlights of the morning and afternoon of this Spring day will include close reading, one by one spaced through the day, of the five ‘movements’ of what is widely believed to be his finest work. |
The cost of the day will be £38 for the teaching sessions (or £28* concs. for 18 years & under, senior citizens,
full-time students, unwaged - ES40 - and disabled) and a further £22 for coffee, lunch, and afternoon tea at Ferrar House.
For rail-travellers who would like to share a taxi from Huntingdon Rail Station OR Sawtry Green to Little Gidding,
please say so on your form.
Make your cheque, for £60 or £50 concessionary rate, payable to Graham Fawcett and send it with the completed
booking form to him at
2 Harpur Mews, London WC1N 3PE.
You will then be sent your ticket(s) for the day.
Enquiries to: Graham Fawcett on grahamkfawcett@googlemail.com or 0207 405 3997.
Details of Graham Fawcett’s work and news on this event are available at www.grahamfawcett.co.uk.
COMMENT ON ONE OF GRAHAM FAWCETT’S ELIOT’S LITTLE GIDDING DAYS It was a great session – so lively and enlightening, and you were so informative. I hadn’t read Eliot in any detail for years and years, and it made me anxious to go back and read more. You gave us all so much to think about and mull over and go off and pursue further. What I realised when re-reading the Quartets was just how much of Eliot has become part of my mental landscape – a bit like the Bible and Shakespeare.. I kept finding myself muttering, “Oh, of course, that’s where that quotation comes from!” Joan McGavin COMMENT ON GRAHAM FAWCETT’S LATEST ELIOT’S LITTLE GIDDING DAY Reverend Liz Griffiths
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Saturday 27th November 2010, 1030am-430pm
DORCHESTER, DORSET
DANTE’S DRAMATIC JOURNEY PART THREE
Beyond The Mountain Summit
EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY PARADISE
with Graham Fawcett of The Poetry School
Judge Jeffreys' House, 6 High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1UJ
An introduction to, and close reading of, Dante’s Divine Comedy §2 – Purgatorio, Cantos XXX-XXXIII and §3 - Paradiso
Gustav Dore's study of Jupiter from Dante's Paradiso - canto XVIII, lines 76-77
“Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third”, declared T S Eliot in his 1929 essay on the poet. Dante’s Divine Comedy, a 14,000-line verse narrative of heart-stopping brilliance, written in terza rima, the beguiling aba bcb cdc rhyme scheme which he had invented, tells the apparently autobiographical story of how, at Easter in the year 1300, Dante had set out, with the ghost of the Roman poet Virgil as his guide, on a life-changing pilgrimage. Dante's Dramatic Journey - Part Three follows Dante from his reunion with Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise ever upward - "my course is set for an uncharted sea", he declares - beyond the summit of the Mount of Purgatory and through the great series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth to the climax of his pilgrimage.
A restaurant room at Judge Jeffeys' House is reserved for us through the day, including for lunch.
Enquiries to: Graham Fawcett on grahamkfawcett@googlemail.com or 0207 405 3997.
Further details of Graham Fawcett’s work are available at www.grahamfawcett.co.uk
-------------------------PLEASE CUT AND PASTE HERE, COMPLETE AND SEND---------------------------
Dante’s Dramatic Journey – Part Three Saturday 27th November 2010 I’d like to enrol on Dante’s Dramatic Journey – Part Three – Beyond the Mountain Summit - at Judge Jeffreys' House in Dorchester on Saturday 27th November 2010.
NAME(S):
POSTAL AND E-MAIL ADDRESSES:
TELEPHONE NUMBERS:
I enclose a cheque for £35* (or £25* concessionary rate for 18 years and under, senior citizens, full-time students, unwaged - ES40 - and disabled), which does not include refreshments or lunch. Please make your cheque payable to Graham Fawcett and send it with the completed booking form to Graham Fawcett, 2 Harpur Mews, London WC1N 3PE. You will then be sent your ticket(s) for the day.
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Monday 6th December 2010, 615pm (supper with wine) for a 645pm start
The Book You Always Meant to Read
Dante's Divine Comedy
LECTURE 3
Dante's Inferno
Cantos XVI-XXII
the third of fourteen monthly
supper lectures at St Olave's,
Hart Street, London EC3
(near Tower Hill)
continuing on the first Monday of every month
except January (17th) and May (9th)
- no programme in August 2011
black and white illustration from the Inferno by Gustave Dore
| More details coming shortly - watch this space |
NOW BOOKING - OR BUY AT THE DOOR ON THE NIGHT
Admission: £15 per head (includes hot food, with vegetarian option, and wine).
Catering by Sumo Salad - hot food and salads
If you would like to book in advance, make payment out to St Olave Churchwardens and send to: Phil Manning, Church Manager, St Olave Rectory, 8 Hart Street, London EC3R 7NB
Phil Manning may also be contacted at: sanctuaryinthecity@mac.com
Click here for a printable map (new window - Adobe Acrobat is required, which can be downloaded here)
Returning in 2011
FLORENCE, ITALY
POETRY PLACES 1 – (dates to be announced)
Milton & Galileo in Florence
A weekend recreating Galileo's life and work in Florence and the atmosphere in the city leading up to the moment when the young John Milton came to visit him under house arrest here in 1638, and the impact it had on his poetry, notably Paradise Lost - with specially arranged access to Galileo's own notebooks in the Florence National Library's Galileo archive and to his villa overlooking the city, a visit to the Galileo collection (including his two surviving handmade telescopes) in the Museum of the History of Science, and a walk into the hills retracing Galileo's footsteps. Information will be available about flights and accommodation.
Comments from students on the first Milton and Galileo weekend
"It was a truly wonder-filled trip, and I'm very grateful to you for organising it."
Vishal Pathak
"Thank you for our wonderful visit to Florence. The people and times we were thinking about - 1638 and all that - still feel very vivid and tangible. I've been catching up on Dava Sobell's book, recognising Galileo's houses as they crop up in the book, how they look now, and remembering the views you can see from there. I've been trying to tell people about what we did. It was breathtaking to be able to see Galileo's manuscripts and his drawings of the moon with our group in the back room of the library . . . "
Lucy Moy-Thomas
"I would like to add how much Neil and I enjoyed the week-end in Florence. Neil has waxed lyrical over the firm's intranet."
Frances Spurrier
Enquiries to: 020 7405 3997 or grahamkfawcett@gmail.com
Returning in 2012
RECANATI (NEAR ANCONA), ITALY
POETRY PLACES 4 – (dates to be announced)
Giacomo Leopardi weekend
Within sight of the Adriatic in the lovely medieval hill-town where Leopardi was born and lived nearly all of his life, a weekend in which to enjoy the poems of Leopardi where they were written and set, and to reflect on the challenges involved in translating him. There will be specially arranged visits to Palazzo Leopardi where the Leopardi family still live and to the Centre for Leopardi Studies, both of which also offer excellent exhibitions on the poet's life and works.
Comments from students on the first Giacomo Leopardi in Recanati weekend:
Thank you very much indeed for such an interesting and enriching Recanati visit. A real pleasure.
Madeleine David
I very much enjoyed the Recanati session. I feel that I know Leopardi, the man, much more now after your talks and that wonderful introduction to the libraries we were given, and when I wander round the town in the future (usually on Sunday mornings to browse round the antique/junk market ) I'll have a stronger and even more distinct impression of Leopardi's presence. It should also send me back to his poetry.
Caroline Maldonado
I wanted to say a big thank you for a great weekend. I learned a lot and am grateful for how much you gave to all of us of your time and enthusiasm. I also really valued the time to reflect away from the pressures, and that has been a bonus for me!
Contented participant