ON STAGE IN SOUTHWOLD WEEKEND ~ Poets of East Anglia

Poets of East Anglia

Famous poems by poets with an East Anglian connection, including excerpts from ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam’ by Edward Fitzgerald, Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’, and ‘Peter Grimes’ by George Crabbe, and poems by the Earl of Surrey, Thomas Nashe, John Clare, George Orwell, W.G.Sebald and others: together with four local contemporary East Anglian poets reading their work.

Claire Hamburger is the daughter of poets Michael Hamburger and Anne Beresford, and started writing poetry at an early age. As well as writing, she also paints and plays music, and the three art forms have preoccupied her all her life, and have overlapped, informing each other in her work. Claire has variously been a teacher, community artist and, now, counsellor. She has a strong belief in humanity and humanitarian causes, and in the relationship between nature and humanity. Much
of her writing reflects this. She has exhibited artworks locally, and has been immersed in the London cityscape, and Norfolk and Suffolk landscape for many years. Claire has had poems published in various poetry magazines, and was part of a poetry collection of the work of three Suffolk poets, Poetry from the Edge. She has also won various poetry prizes.

Will Stone is a poet, essayist and literary translator who divides his time between East Suffolk, Exmoor and the European continent. His first poetry collection, Glaciation (Salt, 2007), won the International Glen Dimplex Award (Dublin, Ireland) for Poetry in 2008. Subsequent collections Drawing in Ash (Salt, 2011), The Sleepwalkers (Shearsman 2016) and The Slowing Ride (Shearsman 2020) have been critically appraised. A fifth collection Immortal Wreckage will appear from Shearsman in May 2024.
Will’s published translations from French and German include works by Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gérard de Nerval, Georg Simmel, Maurice Betz, Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach. Will’s most recent published translations were Nietzsche in Italy by Guy de Pourtalès (Pushkin Press, 2022) and Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach (Wakefield Press, 2022).
Will has contributed reviews, essays, poems and translations to a number of literary publications including the Times Literary Supplement, the London Magazine, the Guardian, the Spectator, Apollo Magazine, the White Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Agenda, Irish Pages and Poetry Review.

Florence Cox has been writing poetry since her teens. She studied French and Italian at Leeds University, trained as a teacher and then cycled from her native Ipswich to southwest France in 1975. After two years in Rochefort-Sur-Mer she spent over four years in the marketing department of the world’s leading inflatable boat company in Paris, eventually moving to Felixstowe in 1981. She has worked as a teacher in primary, secondary and tertiary education, as well as spending some time as a PA and secretary. The East Suffolk Poetry Writers’ Workshop led by Michael Laskey and the Poetry Party have encouraged and nurtured her poetry writing. She has had a dozen commendations and a couple of prizes in the Crabbe Poetry Competition. In 2012 her poem Darkness featured in Ruth Padel’s Radio 4 programme Poetry Workshop and her poem Punting from Camden Lock was highly commended by Liz Lochhead in the 2014 Bridport Poetry Competition.
Florence has published four pamphlets: Dead Wife’s Dresses 2000, Sap and Stones 2007, Jetsam Walks 2010, Freedom 2015.

R. G. Binns lives in Suffolk. His poems have appeared in a wide range of magazines, including Poetry Review, The Rialto and Stand, and in the anthology of contemporary Suffolk verse, Poetry from the Edge. He is the author of six poetry collections: Time upon a Once, Going to Stonefall, Twenty Empty Rooms, Raucous, The Night and Dragonfly Behaviour.

The event devised, produced and introduced by Michael Rowan-Robinson.

This event is part of our ‘On Stage in Southwold’ weekend.

Sunday May 5th, 11am: tickets £5.