Peter Davidson reading from his new poetry collection, Artic Elegies

Peter Davidson reading from his new poetry collection, Artic Elegies

Please note: the original talk by Dr Erin Lafford has been postponed to Hilary term.

Speaker: Professor Peter Davidson

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This event is part of the Environmental Humanities Lunchtime Seminar Series.

This is a mighty book of Norths: northern geographies, histories, lights; a place of definition, frost and cold. There is an unfaltering Recusant spirit about these poems, a survival through defeat and a sense of underlying permanences.

Each poem has an occasion: some of the occasions are personal meetings, conversations, which unlock shared scenes and themes; some are historical in origin, their past often one of early Christian faith or religious conflict. The poems abound in art, in specific lived detail, particulars of landscape, and in a harsh weather which is not unlike time itself in its effect on the living and aging imagination. Each poem requires a different metre, a different pace; each form is carefully attuned to its occasion.

 

Biography:

Peter Davidson was born in Scotland in 1957 and educated there and at the Universities of Cambridge and York. He is Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, Oxford, and Fellow-Curator of the Hall’s art collection. As well as academic works he has published several works of literary nonfiction.

As always, if anyone would like to offer a lunchtime talk, film, reading, musical performance, conference proposal, or anything else relevant to the environmental humanities, please do get in touch with fiona.stafford@some.ox.ac.uk and elisa.cozzi@ell.ox.ac.uk. We would also welcome expressions of interest from potential DPhil students planning to work on Environmental Humanities topics.