Rommi Smith: Notes from a Residency

Contact: h.catterall@wordsworth.org.uk

Website: https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/events/rommi-smith-notes-from-a-residency/

Rommi Smith, our Poet in Residence for September, will read finished and in-progress poems inspired by her residency, alongside existing work. She will explore a re-reading of William Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils, and Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal entry about the subject, in a context of liberation narratives and, specifically, Wordsworth’s Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty.

This event is hosted by Michael McGregor, Director of the Wordsworth Trust, and will include an audience Q&A.

About Rommi Smith

Rommi is a poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer, librettist and broadcaster. She is a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Theatre and winner of The Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry. In 2007, she was appointed inaugural Parliamentary Writer in Residence. Her work centred upon the parliamentary exhibition: The British Slave Trade: Abolition, Parliament and People, marking the bicentenary of the parliamentary act to abolish to slave trade. Rommi has held residencies at Keats’ House, for the British Council and is a three-time writer in residence for the BBC. She is a contributor to Front Row, Poetry Please, The Verb, The Essay and the radio documentary Invisible Man: Parable for our Times?

Rommi has spent her residency in Grasmere working with the education team developing new workshops and resources for outreach school visits, holding pop-up readings in the garden, giving an online reading, facilitating a workshop for Dove Cottage Poets, and working on new writing.

Photograph of Rommi Smith © Lizzie Coombe

Time: 7:00pm