Our 2021 contemporary poetry reading series, “Go to the poets, they will speak to thee”, is curated and hosted by poet Kim Moore. We will be listening to what poets have to say about our turbulent times, and how poetry can cross borders to challenge, delight and inspire us. Each event in the series is part reading, part open mic – and the theme of the open mic changes every month!

Threaded throughout Wordsworth’s poems is a fascination with trees. In The Prelude, he writes about the Lorton Yew in particular as “A living thing/Produced too slowly to ever decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent/To be destroyed”. The tree is conceived as being something that stands outside of time, that holds intimations of immortality. Our guest poet this month is Katharine Towers, who will be reading from her new Picador collection Oak. This is a terrifically imaginative look at the life-cycle of the oak, its role in ecology and mythology and a close examination of a different kind of consciousness and being. Our open mic theme this month is “Trees”.

Book: https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/events/an-evening-with-katharine-towers/