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Preston Poetry Reading
'pushes all the right buttons' with students
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Poets Carol Ann
Duffy and Gillian Clarke read to a sell-out audience at St.
Peters Arts Centre in Preston.
School and sixth
form students had travelled from as far away as Newcastle
and Leeds to hear their words brought to life.
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"We evidently pushed
all the right buttons with schools and sixth forms" said Daniel
Lamont, head of the Cultural Studies Department at the University
of Central Lancashire, which had organised the event. He admitted
that the only poet to have sold out such an event before was Seamus
Heaney.
Professor Michael Parker's
introduction to the event suggested that the two women who would
read were of the same stature as the famous Irish poet and representative
of poetry in Britain today. He described Clarke as "Wales'
foremost living poet" and reminded the audience that Duffy
was Scots-born, of Irish descent and raised in Stafford.
After the reading, school
students like Ros, Claire and Lucy from Leeds Girls' High School
queued for up to half an hour to talk to the poets about work they
will soon be examined on. To them, Duffy especially needed no introduction,
Lucy said "we've been to AS Level conferences about Carol Ann
Duffy before, but this was the first time we've been able to see
her in person".
The high attendance and
enthusiastic audience for this event bodes well for the Department's
future plans, in conjunction with other agencies, to introduce a
programme of regular poetry readings in Autumn 2001. Poets like
Benjamin Zephaniah are already pencilled in and Lamont revealed
that his current project is to try to secure the Poet Laureate himself,
Andrew Motion.
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Review
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Poetry
Reading a sell-out in Preston
Review:
Myth, reality and redeeming the language
In
their own words: Hear the poets read online
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