Graham Fawcett
Poetry Events
Click on boxes below for full details, including how to book live and recorded lectures and concerts.
*
All bookings are processed manually, so the response is not immediate but will usually reach you within a few hours.
Events Currently Scheduled
Experience poetry over several hours or several days
Sign up to receive email updates
Complete the simple form below to receive occasional email updates. You can unsubscribe at any time and we will never share your address with anyone else.
Newsletter
Talks
Graham’s most popular talk is what he calls a ‘lecture-performance-with-readings’. Its aim is to entertain as well as to inform, and it runs in two 45-minute halves with a 20-minute interval. Audiences over the years have said how they enjoy the interweaving of poems and biography with Graham’s own highly individual ‘take’ on both. "You took a unique approach, sent me in directions I hadn't expected and left me wanting to discover more for myself", said Christine Murphy after the Neruda lecture in Lewes.
Events On Request - Check events above for current schedule
Click on each picture to see the range of events on offer. Some of these will be added to the top schedule as dates are arranged. All are available on request to groups, festivals, and others.
Walks
The walks usually last for two hours, and are offered in Central London, in Hampstead and in Highgate. Graham develops a literary adventure story in different episodes by tapping into the great interest people have in linking poems to the places where they were written or the poets lived. The idea is to stay out in the open air as we pass these landmark addresses, but just now and again it proves possible to put our heads round The Door.
Word & Image
Art has inspired poets and writers for as long as there have been words and images, and the opposite is just as fascinatingly true. The walls of ruined houses in Pompeii have paintings made possible by legend, myth and narrative. Whenever such stories in literature and poetry has the capacity to inspire the eye and ear with equal force, painters, sculptors and illustrators alike are to be found rushing to re-deliver that impact in the language of paint and word.
Retreats
These can last for anything between one and four days and be residential or non-residential. Graham reads aloud, or projects poems onto a screen, or provides handouts. The idea is to experience being full-time with the word, so that what we knew or did not know beforehand becomes of less importance than what we come to discover outside or inside ourselves in the moment. So these retreats are rare opportunities to hear the poems deeply, reflect on them, and, if and when we wish to, share the insights they encourage in us. It is very much a reading together, and not an academic exercise, so you’re not expected to analyse poems in a literary way. Instead, we can concern ourselves simply with the ways poetry can speak to our deepest selves.
On Request
All events are available on request. Please view the events list above for current dates or contact me to express your interest.
Click here to express your interest or complete the form below to receive occasional email updates
You can unsubscribe at any time and we will never share your details with a third party
Newsletter
Top picture: Graham teaching a group at Martha’s Vineyard, photo by kind permission of Sarah Glazer
Seven Olympians: Emily Dickinson, daguerreotype
World Poets: D H Lawrence, courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
The book you always meant to read: Dante Alighieri, Giotto di Bondone
Samuel Pepys by John Hayls, National Portrait Gallery
Poetry is Communication: Girl with stylus and tablet, fresco, Pompeii
Walks: Russell Square
Word and Image: Johannes Vermeer: Woman in Blue Reading a Letter c.1662-3
Retreats: Othona West Dorset