The Antechapel with Newton in the distance!
Trinity College Literary Society and the Chapel team have recently worked together to put on a series of readings by contemporary poets in the antechapel under the title Night Muse. I was honoured to be one of the four poets chosen to read, closing a series which began with Rowan Williams. I know that a number of my friends, and more widely, other readers of my poetry, would like to have been there, so I am posting a recording of the reading here, together with the poster and a pdf of the beautifully printed little booklet of the poems which Trinity produced for the occasion. Do feel free to download and print that to accompany the reading if you wish. The Antechapel is full of monuments to distinguished former members of the college and I gave the reading standing just beneath the statue of Newton, and gazing across at the great statue of Tennyson. George Herbert needed no statue, for, as you will hear, his spiritual presence was everywhere.
I read a selection from Sounding the Seasons but I also read a number of poems to be included in my forthcoming volume the Singing Bowl, both published by Canterbury Press so I hope this post will also serve as an introduction and appetiser for that book. A click on ‘The Reading’ will take you to the podomatic page where you can listen to, or download the reading. The painting in the poetry folio is by Faye Hall, drawing on a photograph by Lancia Smith.
poetry folio
Tennyson’s statue in Trinity -the respectable view!
- the bowl of my pipe by the bowl of his!
Malcolm Guite 