Skip to main navigationSkip to main content
The University of Southampton
Centre for Modern and Contemporary Writing

Upcoming Events

The CMCW has a wide range of events taking place in 2017-2018.

F.T. Prince Lecture 

The Fifth Annual FT Prince Lecture will take place on Wednesday 11th October 2017, when Professor Isobel Armstrong will deliver a talk entitled 'Reading Women's Experimental Poetry'. This lecture speculates on new models of writing and reading poetry that deliberately move away from expectations of what a poem is. Sometimes termed a parallel tradition, this poetry is forging new terms. Women are particularly strong in this movement, including Carol Watts, Andrea Brady and Caroline Bergvall.

Register here.

Writers in Conversation

Four events are planned for the first semester of 2017-18. Events are usually held on Monday nights at Nuffield Theatre’s café at 7:30. Please note that the Jennifer Egan reading will take place on Sunday Nov. 12 on the Avenue campus.

Rachel Sieffert is speaking on Monday Oct 16.  Sieffert has been shortlisted for the Booker and named one of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, She will read and discuss her new novel being released in June 2017, A Boy in Winter. Her other books include Afterwards (2007) and The Walk Home (2014). This event is being co-sponsored by Parkes Institute. 

Alex Wheatle is reading on Monday Oct 30.  Wheatle is the winner of the 2016 Guardian children’s fiction prize, and will read from Straight Outta Crongton, the latest of his award-winning Crongton sequence of books for teen-agers. Born in 1963 to Jamaican parents living in Brixton, he has also published six novels for adults, including the critically successful Brixton Rock. 

On Sunday, November 12th, Jennifer Egan, who won the Pulitzer for her novel Visit From the Good Squad, will read from and discuss her new book Manhattan Beach. This special Writers in Conversation event is co-sponsored by the Human Worlds Festival, and is being held at Lecture Hall A, Avenue Campus.

On December 4th, Philip Hoare,  Professorial Fellow of the Department of English will discuss his new book, RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, released in July 2017. Hoare’s books include Wilde's Last Stand, Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital, England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia, and Leviathan Or, The Whale, which won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize, 2009.

Entropics

Three further Entropics events are scheduled in 2017, with more to come in Spring 2018. All of these take place in Mettricks Old Town cafe, and performances commence at 7pm.

Samantha Walton will perform on October 24th. Samantha Walton is a poet, co-organiser of Anathema poetry series and co-editor of Sad Press. She teaches English Literature at Bath Spa University. She was a Poet in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum in 2013, and in July 2015 was Poet in Residence at SoundEye Poetry Festival in Cork, Ireland. Her publications include City Break Weekend Songs (2011) and Strange House (2015). This event is hosted in conjunction with the SO: To Speak Festival in Southampton. 

 Vahni Capildeo will read on November 21st. Vahni Capildeo's books include Utter (Peepal Tree, 2013), Simple Complex Shapes (Shearsman, 2015), and Measures of Expatriation (Carcanet; Forward Poetry Prizes Best Collection; T.S. Eliot Prize nomination). An ex-medievalist, she worked in lexicography, academia, and culture for development. Her performances engage with Euripides, Shakespeare, and Martin Carter. Recent non-fiction appears in PN Review, adda (Commonwealth Writers) and Granta. She is a Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at the University of Leeds. This event is organised in conjunction with the Human Worlds Festival. 

Nat Raha and Linus Slug will read, both together and apart, on December 6th. 

Linus Slug: Insect Librarian, is the founder of ninerrors poetry series, editor of FREAKLUNG poetry zine and co-editor/event organizer at Stinky Bear Press. Recent publications include: the science of poetry • the poetry of science Linus Slug / Peter Manson broadside 2015, and Type Specimen: An Observant Guide To Linus Slug (Contraband, 2014).

Nat Raha is a poet and trans / queer activist, living in Edinburgh. Her most recent pamphlets are 'de/compositions' (Enjoy Your Homes Press, 2017) and '£/€xtinctions', and her essay 'Transfeminine Brokenness, Radical Transfeminism' recently appeared in the South Atlantic Quarterly. 

Privacy Settings