Wednesday 22 October 2014

Something for the weekend

On Sunday J. O. Morgan will be performing/reciting the whole text of At Maldon in company with the actor Ishbel McFarlane at the Dundee Literary Festival. If Dundee is reachable, I think you should go. Here is Helena Nelson of HappenStance Press on Morgan’s delivery of the poem at this year’s StAnza festival: ‘I have never heard anything like it. I had heard him read before but I have never heard anything like this. For the first time in my life I grasped the living concept of the epic – I inhabited it. J O Morgan took us inside that terrible, beautiful, ancient story of what men do, and held us there. Time stopped.’

Also on Sunday, a new poem by Dan O’Brien derived from his continuing collaboration with the war reporter Paul Watson will be in the Sunday Times. More new War Reporter poems will be in the first issue of Sonofabook, CBe’s magazine (website page up next month). Dan O’Brien’s new book Scarsdale is available now from the website; official publication day will be 7 November, when he is reading at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival as last year’s winner of the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for War Reporter.

On 11 November, Armistice Day, Morgan and O’Brien will again be running parallel. Morgan’s At Maldon is shortlisted for the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Award, announced on that day. O’Brien will be reading from War Reporter and Scarsdale at The Round Church, Cambridge, CB2 1UB (free admission).

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