After a long period where it felt like very little was happening in my poetry life, last week I was lucky enough to be involved in two great events. Firstly my good friend (and excellent poet) Genevieve Carver invited me to take part in a reading and panel discussion with Caroline Bird and Sarah Wardle as part of Sheaf Poetry Festival. The event was entitled Making Meaning From Madness and I loved sharing our experiences of mental health and what poetry means for us in that context, it felt like a really powerful happening and I learned a lot from Sarah and Caroline, as well as being blown away by their readings. The video recording of our event is here:
Later in the week I submitted a short presentation combining words, music and images from my unpublished The Shadow’s Dance project to the Landscapes colloquium hosted by University of Sheffield’s School of English. You can see the film embedded below.
There are loads of other interesting videos – both academic and creative responses to the theme of Landscapes – on the website here:
https://sites.google.com/view/landscapespgc/home?authuser=0
I was particularly impressed with some of the contributions to the Queer Landscapes panel, and Bijal Vachharajani’s creative work. I’m still making my way through the wealth of material on there.
I hope everyone is holding up as best they can, and look forwards to a time we can meet to hear each other read and discuss ideas in person.
Benjamin Dorey 