Poetry: Jen Hadfield
Jen Hadfield’s poetry is a point of reference for Monika Szuba’s work on Scottish poetry. From the publication of her first volume entitled Almanacs (2005), Hadfield explores the borders of poetic language with exceptional courage and rigorousness. Thanks to her talent, originality, and lack of artistic compromise, she received the T.S. Eliot Prize and was the youngest poet to do so in the history of the prize. Her poems show an embodied speaker in an interaction with the world and they constitute a reflection on the relational nature of a being immersed in the landscape and language of the Shetland Islands. The meeting with Hadfield offers an opportunity to discuss subjects that have become particularly important in a world dominated by virtual experience: what is a “non-place,” how is the understanding of the categories of “place” and home changing, and what is linked with being at home in a landscape.
literature and theatre
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Poems for these days - a meeting with Jen Hadfield. Moderator − Monika Szuba
10 May 2021, 19:00-20:00 CET
Jen Hadfield
Jen Hadfield is a poet published by Picador, whose fourth collection The Stone Age (2021) explores neurodiversity. She is also working on a collection of essays about Shetland, where she lives. Her work has garnered numerous awards, including the 2008 T.S.Eliot Prize for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe). Her work attempts to advocate for our precious, endangered planet and species. She is concerned with how to live in the here-and-now in an increasingly virtual world, by attending to our interactions with the wild world, always trying to write poetry that is both immediate and experimental, truly ‘livin language’ (Tom Leonard). She loves contemporary ceramics and folksong and, having written libretto for an opera produced by Music Theatre Transparant, is keen to explore writing contemporary folk lyric. She has performed her work internationally. Jen is a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at Glasgow University and, more widely, teaches students of all ages and all levels of confidence through a number of high-profile creative organisations. She was the Charles Causley resident in Autumn 2018 and received Creative Scotland and National Lottery funding for her latest book in 2018. She is building a house in Shetland, very slowly.
twitter: hadfield_jen
literature and theatre
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Poetry in Scotland Today
13 May 2021, 13:00-14:30 CET
The premise for the webinar originates in Kathleen Jamie’s statement that “what provokes poems, all poems, is the curious business of being in the world”. Considering the flourishing of creativity in Scotland, the discussion will revolve around poetic representations of this moment. How do poets explore “the curious business of being in the world” in, and through, their work? In what ways do they evoke time experienced through place by employing language and other means? What are the main themes, forms, movements and trends? These and other questions will provide the essence of the discussion.
Invited speakers: Lindsay Blair (University of the Highlands and Islands), Robin MacKenzie (University of St Andrews), Camille Manfredi (Université de Bretagne Occidentale), Julian Wolfreys (University of Gdańsk)
Chair: Monika Szuba (University of Gdańsk)