A Lecture by Belinda McKeon, Festival Curator
The Eye of the Poem
Thursday 24th March at 1pm Free Event Advance Booking Recommended
Czeslaw Milosz framed it as the particular challenge of the poet: to contemplate the things of the world as they are, “without illusion.” To see things clearly: to pronounce them more clearly still. And yet this clarity is no matter, merely, of comprehensibility; even if the things of life are far from comprehensible, it is the poet’s task to glean their truth. How does the poet do this? How, through the workings of the imagination, does the poet move
beyond the comforts of illusion? And is it in such clear-eyed moments that we get our fullest sight of the consciousness of the poet?
In advance of the 2011 festival, the curator of dlr Poetry Now
will give a talk on attention in the poem, drawing on the work of
several poets from this year’s programme.