Graham Fawcett

writer, teacher, translator and broadcaster

e-mail: grahamkfawcett@gmail.com

telephone: 020 7405 3997

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Events available on request for 2010

for full details please write to Graham Fawcett at the above address

One-day events

These have usually been held on a Saturday and can now be made available either to groups or to individuals who would like to create a group for the event in their locality

DANTE’S DRAMATIC JOURNEY PART ONE

Dante Alighieri portrayed by Domenico Michelino holding The Divine Comedy against a backdrop of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise

A one-day (1030am-430pm) introduction to and close reading of

Dante’s Divine Comedy §1 – Inferno

(1030am-430pm)

with Graham Fawcett of The Poetry School

“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 journey which led him down into Hell, up the mountain of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise, and beyond.

Part One of Dante's Dramatic Journey will re-trace the poet’s footsteps from the moment when, as he tells us in his opening lines, he found himself, at the age of 35, in a dark and sombre wood, with no sign of the path he “should have been on”. How could he get his life back? By making the journey of a lifetime which no-one had ever made alive before. We will look at Dante the poet in the context of his times as a prelude to exploring Inferno, the first book of his Divine Comedy, with plenty of close reading and discussion of key passages in English translation.

TIMETABLE (EXAMPLE)

(can be varied as required)

from 1000am

Doors open. Coffee

1030-1125

Dante’s Dramatic Journey – from the Dark Wood to the City of Dis.

1125-1135 Break

1135-1230

Dante’s Dramatic Journey – from the City of Dis to the Great Precipice.

1230-1245 Pre-lunch drinks.

1245-1400 Lunch

1400-1415 Break

1415-1515

Dante’s Dramatic Journey – from the foot of the Precipice to the meeting with Ulysses.

1515-1530 Tea.

1530-1630 Dante’s Dramatic Journey – the final descent.

1630 End of day

Enquiries to: Graham Fawcett on grahamkfawcett@googlemail.com or 0207 405 3997.

Further details of Graham Fawcett’s work are available at http://www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/

Dante Alighieri, painted by Giotto in the chapel

of the Bargello palace in Florence. This oldest

portrait of Dante was painted during his

lifetime before his exile from his native city

Additional one-day events will become available in a few days’ time here

***

Morning, afternoon or evening events

These can last anything from two to three hours with a short break, and would take the form of ‘interruptable’ lectures which lead into a close reading and discussion of a number of poems by the chosen poet. Generous handouts are provided and no advance knowledge or preparation is required.

You may like to request one or two sessions in a day.

Poets may be selected from the following course (the syllabus is set out anti-clockwise starting with Seamus Heaney):

Heaney to Homer and Back

Reading Poets Present and Past as a Companion to Writing

Heaney to Homer and Back is a course for those who read and/or write poetry. Each session aims to give an overall sense of the work of one of thirty poets, and encourages you to read further and think in ways which may help with your own work.

1939 Seamus Heaney

1898 Federico Garcia Lorca 1930 Derek Walcott

1875 Rainer Maria Rilke 1904 Pablo Neruda

1863 Constantin Cavafy 1892 Hugh MacDiarmid

1830 Emily Dickinson 1889 Anna Akhmatova

1821 Charles Baudelaire 1885 Ezra Pound

1799 Aleksandr Pushkin 1879 Wallace Stevens

1798 Giacomo Leopardi 1865 W.B.Yeats

1608 John Milton 1819 Walt Whitman

1564 William Shakespeare c.1524 Luis de Camoes

1265 Dante Alighieri c.1340 Geoffrey Chaucer

c.1200 the Nibelungenlied c.1080 La Chanson de Roland

1020BC - 762AD Early Chinese Lyric Poetry c.800 Beowulf

70 BC Vergil 43BC Ovid

c.500BC onwards The Kalevala 65BC Horace

c.800BC Homer

Poems will be read in their original English or in English translation. In each case, we will look at individual poems and the poets' own thoughts both about them and about poetry in general. What we harvest from each session will vary: it may be a different kind of feeling about tackling a particular subject or length of line, or perhaps a cadence that stays in the mind like a tune, or a more general sense of companionship.

Or from the following two courses:

World Poets and More World Poets

These reading courses look at the work of poets who have made their mark upon their own countries or lifetimes and who offer a fresh and enduring vitality of thought and feeling to readers and poets alike, with writing represented from a number of very different Europes as well as Asia, South America and Africa from antiquity to now

World Poets

George Seferis

Elizabeth Bishop

Friedrich Hölderlin

Ludovico Ariosto

Robert Frost

Sylvia Plath

Ted Hughes

Adunis

John Donne

Dylan Thomas

Lucretius