Dear Poetry Friends
LIVE
Tuesday 3 June 2025, 630pm, Brendon Books, Bath Place, Taunton, Somerset.
AUDEN IN AMERICA
I was writing my poetry memoir Being There earlier this year when one morning the Auden chapter fell apart in two: one Auden spending his last fifteen summers in rural Austria from 1958, the other sailing to New York on a one-way ticket in January 1939.
As he gathered his luggage about him in those last minutes of the voyage from Southampton and the temperature now well below zero, I imagined Auden unaware that within two days of landing, he would be hearing of the death of Yeats and writing his poem about it; that he would meet the love of his life, Chester Kallman in April; and that Adolf Hitler would invade Poland, and Auden make history
in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid . . .
on September 1st 1939.
It was hours after Donald Trump’s Guy Fawkes Night victory in the 2024 American election that I went looking for Auden in 52nd Street. Sleuths believe the ‘dive’ was one of two jazz clubs on West 52nd between Fifth and Seventh Avenues: either Dizzy’s at number 64 or Famous Door at number 66. I found no trace of any of them.
Yet, such had been the demonization of the new President-elect on the East Coast, the morning’s cold wind was whipping up the mirage of a thought: that, during the previous night, like the appearance one morning of the Berlin Wall’s barbed-wire warm-up act, that Swing Street sidewalk had been replaced by the arcade of skyscraper buttresses now there: airbrushing all the old music, every stool Auden could have sat on, and the bar radio that might have brought the invasion news to him – like the one behind the bar which,
“suddenly breaking in with its banal noises upon their separate senses of themselves, by compelling them to pay attention to a common world of great slaughter and much sorrow, began, without their knowledge, to draw these four strangers closer to each other”,
in Auden’s massive poem ‘The Age of Anxiety’.
The post-election pre-inauguration jigsaw on November 6th 2024 still had plenty of gaps, but an eventual picture was emerging. The electorate is never wrong: a majority had woken up happy. In Auden’s old stamping-grounds, it felt as though Trump had just invaded America without marching on Washington. The radar of Auden’s prophetic eye pulses clear as history: lines in ‘September 1st 1939’ read like old ticker tape reporting the new aftermath:
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief,
We must suffer them all again.
Trump had made a comeback. But so had Auden”.
BOOKING FOR AUDEN IN AMERICA OPEN NOW. CLICK HERE AT https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/taunton/brendon-books-cic/graham-fawcett-auden-in-america/e-ajxydo
W H Auden, 1939
Manhattan 1931
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LIVE ON TOUR IN 2025
BEING THERE
Emily Dickinson, 1847
Ezra Pound, 1963
This is a series of ten new lectures based on chapters from my nearly finished book about the poets who have changed my life. They include on-location memoir in Italy, America and Finland. Florence, Venice and New York are all very much in the frame.
I have been encouraged to tell my own story alongside theirs because what the poets were telling me so touched my own life, worded my unspoken thoughts so precisely, even moved me to change course, that I felt we had just jumped out of the same aeroplane and were in free fall in each other’s company.
Available to book now:
D H Lawrence, poet
John Keats
The Kalevala
Ezra Pound
Dante Alighieri
Auden in Austria
Auden in America
Emily Dickinson
Available soon:
Walt Whitman
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To discuss your interest in inviting me to give one or more of these lectures at your chosen venue, contact me at [email protected]
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LIVE ON TOUR IN 2025
AN EVENING TO CALM THE SOUL
Reflecting Deeply in an Age of Anxiety
a concert of piano music and poetry with Robin Rubenstein and Graham Fawcett
John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens (1891)
Your concert was wonderful. I hadn’t realised how much I needed it! I think you should take it on tour! It was too good to be just a one-off. (Susan Roebuck, London)
“Saturday’s concert has been resonating throughout the week: a thought-provoking and beautifully crafted programme of words and music, immaculately timed and delivered, and a bit of perspective, a chance to reflect in these distracted times on what matters. (Romee Day, London)
Robin Rubenstein
Graham Fawcett
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” (Kahlil Gibran)
Come and experience just how good poetry and music can be at dealing with our dread, how uplifting and restorative, filling our arms and ears and hearts.
The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor insists that art is no mere treat or diversion. “I may prefer vanilla ice cream to strawberry”, he says, “but I must have air to breathe. Is listening to Beethoven more like preferring vanilla ice cream or more like needing to breathe?”
We are looking to be included in a local series of arts events at a venue you know and like anywhere in England, Wales, Scotland and beyond.
To read how the idea of this concert came about, the names of composers and poets, and how to book tickets, go to www.grahamfawcett.co.uk/events
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If you are writing . . .
Graham continues to read, comment on, and give tutorials for typescripts of poetry and prose, including collections. Contact him if you would be interested in this for yourself or anyone else at [email protected] .
“How grateful I am for your unfailing gift of wise counsel – whether it’s about a philosophy or the placing of a comma, you’ve been on to it. And never daunting, always friendly”. Patrick Coldstream (2021)
“Your work on my book taught me so much”. Celia Purcell (2022)
“A masterclass in line-breaks and word order”. Owen Gallagher (2022)
“Thank you again for your excellent feedback. It’s been a thrilling process having such attention paid to my work. I have recommended you to a very good friend who is preparing a poetry pamphlet for competitions”. Vishvantara (2024)
‘It’s been thrilling to experience the REAL poem emerge, jewel-like, after applying Graham’s editing suggestions’. Subhadramati Dharmacharini (2024)
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RECORDINGS of fourteen single-poet lectures and two poetry concerts available in Graham’s informal online lecture series can all be booked via https://grahamfawcett.co.uk/events. Click on link here and then on the image.
All best wishes
Graham