An unmissable double bill of readings from two poets celebrated for their range, their reworkings of classical (and Scandinavian) writers and the intensity of their poetic voices. “If there were justice in the world, it would win every prize going” wrote The Guardian, of Robin Robertson’s last collection, The Wrecking Light. Since his first book, Swithering, won the Forward Prize in 2006, Robertson’s “genius for exact and gorgeous imagery” (The New York Review of Books) has been gathering acclaim. His unique vision is again on display in his new collection, Hill of Doors, mixing reworkings of classical mythology with poems exploring everything from childhood to the topography of his native Scotland.
Frank McGuinness might be best known as a Tony Award-winning playwright, celebrated both for his adaptations of classic plays and for original works like Factory Girls and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, but he is also a highly respected poet. His fifth collection, In a Town of Five Thousand People, written with “characteristic energy and intensity” (Poetry Ireland Review), covers an extraordinary range of subjects and tones, from elegies for artists and actors to scathing invective in ‘The Town Next to Us’ and playful, inventive poems like ‘American Football in Booterstown’.