POETS OF THE EMBANKMENT
Poet-psychogeographer Niall McDevitt takes a walk of discovery along the Thames tracing the 700-year history of poets and poetry in the area.
Elizabethans, Romantics, Decadents and Beats feature prominently.
There are the geniuses of England: Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson; of Europe: Heine, Rimbaud, Verlaine; and America: Melville, Ginsberg, Dylan; as well as a bonus Robbie Burns from Scotland.
McDevitt tells the story of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt and how Geoffrey Chaucer luckily managed to escape death at the hands of the Kentish rebels.
But perhaps the most haunting figure is that of the doomed Ernest Dowson who inspired the title of Wilde’s most famous play.
Meeting Sat 24 March and Sat Mar 31 for 2pm in the churchyard of St Martin in the Fields., Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ. £10
The walk will last approx. two hours and will finish in The Olde Cheshire Cheese close to Blackfriars tube.
To book tickets via New River Press: http://www.thenewriverpress.com/events-2/
THE POETS OF HAMMERSMITH
Poet-psychogeographer Niall McDevitt takes an epic walk from border to border of Hammersmith Borough through a half century of poetry.
The great poets who’ve lived in Hammersmith include John Milton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Morris and WB Yeats.
There are stories of black magic, drug addiction, riverside rent-boys and double suicide attempts at such sites as ‘The Isis-Urania Temple’ and ‘The Madhouse of Hammersmith’. Other poets in a stellar cast include such modern giants as Dylan Thomas, David Gascoyne, George Barker, Laura Riding, Robert Graves, WH Auden and Ezra Pound.
And there are the popular poets Ian Dury, Shane MacGowan, Joe Strummer, Bob Marley.
Sun Mar 25 and Sun April 1 Meeting at Kensington Olympia Station for 2pm. The walk will last approx. 2 hours and finish at Ravenscourt Park tube.
To book tickets via New River Press http://www.thenewriverpress.com/events-2/2018/3/4/march-4th-the-poets-of-hammersmith-kensington-olympia-station-niall-mcdevitt-london-poetry-walks
