Poet in the City invites you to a major event combining poetry and architecture in celebration of the opening of a spectacular new arts and office complex at Kings Place, near King’s Cross. There is something both poetic and mysterious about the relationship between human society and its great buildings. This event traces the connections between poetry and architecture and follows poets as they reflect upon human aspirations to beauty and attempts to realise these in concrete, steel and glass.
The evening is chaired by the Guardian’s architecture correspondent, Jonathan Glancey, and will bring together celebrity speakers from the world of architecture with leading contemporary poets performing great poems about architecture, including new poetry especially inspired by the occasion an the building. Featuring:
Sir Jeremy Dixon, Kings Place’s architect, who studied at the Architectural Association and then subsequently taught there and at University College London and at the RCA. In 1989 he formed the architecture practice now called Dixon Jones Ltd. His projects have included the development of the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery. In 2000 he was knighted for his services to architecture;
Sunand Prasad, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who studied Architecture at Cambridge and the Architectural Association in London. In 1988, with Greg Penoyre, he founded the distinguished architectural practice of Penoyre & Prasad. A
champion of great design, he has sat on the UK government’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment from its creation in 1999;
Simon Barraclough, who was born in Yorkshire, studied literature at Nottingham and Sussex Universities and is now a freelance writer living in London. As well as poetry, he writes non-fiction, comedy, articles and reviews and contributes regularly to poetry magazines and anthologies. He won the poetry section of the London Writers’ Competition in 2000. His latest collection Los Alamos Mon Amour has been shortlisted for the Forward and the Felix Dennis Prizes.
Paul Farley, who was born in Liverpool, studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, has lived in London and Brighton and was writer-in-residence at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere for two years. As a poet, he won the Forward Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1998, an Arts Council Writers’ Award in 2000, and a Whitbread Poetry Award in 2003. Paul also lectures in creative writing at Lancaster University and is a writer and broadcaster for radio.
Jacob Sam-La Rose, who is a poet, writer, playwright and educator of Guyanese heritage. He was poet-in-residence at BBC London, and is a touring writer with the British Council. He directs and oversees a range of creative writing initiatives, including the London Teenage Poetry SLAM. He has worked with the National Theatre and the Barbican. Commissioned to make a number of poetry films, he has also worked on the London Open House project, responding to architecture through poetry.
Poet in the City’s Poetry in the built environment initiative, which has received funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, is a consultancy which aims to facilitate delivery of innovative poetry and text-based art in public and private development projects.