Poetry and Choices

LSE Literary Weekend/ Poet in the City 'Poetry and Choices' series

A high profile poetry event reflecting on the choices that we all make in our lives, whether social, economic, moral or spiritual, featuring a great line-up of some of the UK’s finest poets

Jane Duran is a prize winning poet, born in Cuba to Spanish parents, who was brought up in the United States and Chile, and moved to England in 1966 after graduating from Cornell University. Her three poetry collections – Breathe Now, Breathe (1995), Silences from the Spanish Civil War (2002) and Coastal (2006) – are all published by Enitharmon Press. Breathe Now, Breathe won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection and in 2005 Duran received a Cholmondeley Award.

Robert Minhinnick combines being a prize-winning poet with being an essayist and an active environmental campaigner. He has published two collections of essays: Watching the Fire Eater (1992), winner of the 1993 Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award; and Badlands (1996), essays about post-communist Albania, California and the state of Wales and England. He has also edited Green Agenda: essays on the environment of Wales (1994). His book, To Babel and Back, was published in 2005 and won the 2006 Wales Book of the Year Award.

John Mole, a celebrated poet writing for both children and adults, is also an accomplished jazz clarinettist, and has been known to combine poetry and jazz with other poet-musicians such as Roy Fisher and John Lucas. He has won several prizes for his poetry, including an Eric Gregory award, the Cholmondeley Award and the Signal Award, has been Writer in Residence at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and is also Poet in the City's long-standing Poet in Residence.

Jo Shapcott is one of the UK's best loved poets. Her collections include Electrocuting the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998), which won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection). She has won the National Poetry Competition twice and has worked with a number of orchestral composers on collaborative projects. The Transformers, a collection of public lectures given by her as part of her Professorship at Newcastle, was published in 2007.

This event is part of the 'Poetry and Choices' series, organised in conjunction with Poet in the City. Other events in the series include a Ben Okri 'showcase' and a New Audiences event. Poet in the City is a registered charity committed to attracting new audiences to poetry, making new connections for poetry, and raising money to support poetry education, in particular the placing of poets in schools.

This is part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Weekend, the LSE's first ever Literary Festival, celebrating the completion of the New Academic Building.

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