Giles Goodland and Paula Claire

Contact: www.albionbeatnikpoetry.co.uk

Giles Goodland was born in Taunton, was educated at the universities of Wales and California, took a D.Phil at Oxford, has published several books of poetry including A Spy in the House of Years, Capital, What the Things Sang and Gloss. He works as a lexicographer and lives in West London; he writes also on Shakespeare. A versatile poet, not pinned down to any particular style or format, he is critically acclaimed; he won the 2010 Cardiff International Poetry Competition. This evening's recital will include readings from his newly published collection The Dumb Messengers.

Paula Claire started to write poetry in 1961, newly graduated from University College in London; her first publication was in 1968 and her first reading in 1969. She met Bob Cobbing - the hub of British avant garde poetry until his death in 2002 - in 1969, and he was to have a major influence on the direction her poetry would take in the following years; for over 25 years they performed together as part of Koncrete Canticle. Still giving recitals, Paula also runs her own Archive of Sound and Visual Poetry, the largest collection of such work in the UK, and she is a recognized authority on twentieth-century avant garde poetry. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts 2003 in recognition of a lifetime devoted to poetry. Paula does not use the term 'audience' because ever since her first recital she has incorporated vocal participation and considers poetry to be an oral and communal art. She has devised two kinds of participation: 'responsive voices', simple repetitions of key words and phrases, and 'interactive voices', which involves everyone having an annotated text.

This event is part of a month-long reading series.

Price: £4.00

Time: 7:30pm