Baudelaire with Graham Fawcett and Sue Aldred

What a treat it was to hear Graham and Sue give an eye-opening account of this often-misunderstood poet of Paris, yes, but also of the sky, of lust, pleasure, anger and disgust… Canonic translations, mostly by Edna St. Vincent Millay, offered the small select and very engaged audience a glimpse of the dreamer, the lover, the iconoclast, and someone with a definite, if not frequent, twinkle in his eye. We also heard how he became fascinated by Edgar Allan Poe, so much so that he translated many of the American’s works into French, and we discussed other influences on the French poet, Shakespeare’s in particular. As an art critic in his earlier years, visual arts also had a bearing on his view of the world and he in turn influenced later poets, T S Eliot in particular.

We admired Graham and Sue’s mastery of French in both poetry and prose, which highlighted the musicality of the texts with their crescendos, chiaroscuro and dynamic undulation of sounds and moods. Wonderful.

I in particular was delighted that with his Baudelaire Graham completed for me his Seven Olympians cycle (Ovid, Chaucer, Byron, Pushkin, Dickinson and Neruda). If you’ve missed any or indeed you wish to hear any lecture again, please look at grahamfawcett.co.uk

Events

TUESDAY MAY 13 at West Greenwich Library, 7.30 (doors open at 7)

‘Maggie & Maggie’. Same name, different voices: poetry from Maggie Brookes-Butt and Maggie Harris.

Maggie Brookes-Butt has been writing all her life, as a journalist, BBC TV producer, creative writing academic and Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her books include six poetry collections as Maggie Butt and two historical novels as Maggie Brookes. As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and a Londoner to the bone, though she loves to swim in the sea. Maggie will be reading from Wish, her newly published volume of new and selected poems (Greenwich Exchange, 2025). It gathers poems from Maggie’s six previous collections – about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love – alongside bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world.

Maggie Harris is twice Winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Regional Winner of The Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Wales Poetry Award. She has worked as Creative Writing tutor, Reader Development Worker and International Teaching Fellow and in collaboration with artists across genres since 1990. In 2024 she was awarded an Arts Council grant towards revisiting Guyana and its rainforest. She is published in journals including Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, Magma, and The Caribbean Writer. Her poem ‘Canterbury’ is an Art installation in the city’s Westgate Gardens, and her poem, ‘Lit by Fire’ on the North Foreland Lighthouse, was commissioned by the BBC. She has read her work internationally and collaborations with artists in the US have put her poems to music: her poem, ‘This is Not a Gospel Song’ is on YouTube. In 2024 she was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Maggie will be reading from her 11th book, I Sing to the Greenhearts (SEREN, 2025), and from her memoir Kiskadee Girl.

FREE event, all welcome. Refreshments available and books on sale.

TUESDAY JUNE 24 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Telltale Poets: Sarah Barnsley, Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny’

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 2 at West Greenwich Library – Jude Rosen, Derrick Porter and Jemma Borg

TUESDAY OCTOBER 7 at West Greenwich Library – Fiona Moore, Gale Burns and Lisa Kelly