Event overview
0207 717 2224
Fred D'Aguiar reads from and discusses his new volume of poetry: 'Continental Shelf' (Carcanet, 2009). Free entry. Drinks served.
About the Author
Fred D'Aguiar was born in London in 1960 to Guyanese parents and grew up in Guyana, returning to England when he was a teenager. He trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury. His previous collections of poetry are Mama Dot (1985), Airy Hall (1989; winner of the Guyana Poetry Prize), British Subjects (1993) and Bill of Rights (1998; shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize), all published by Chatto. His An English Sampler: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2001. Fred D'Aguiar is also the author of four novels, the first of which, The Longest Memory (Pantheon, 1994), won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His plays include High Life (1987) and A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death (1991), which was performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
About 'Continental Shelf'
In his first full length collection of poems for 11 years, Fred D'Aguiar takes us on a philosophical and geographical journey from innocence to experience, from childhood to middle-age, and from one continent to another. He explores imagination and memory - 'Portable as history and potable as basil' - and how they can help us cope with lust and love and death; violence and grief.
History weighs heavy here - 'There's so much history between us. / I carry ammunition from a past / I do not own, but lay claim to' - and his mind flows, like the Atlantic, 'Back, back, back, to Africa / Where ancestors walked head in air, // But earlier they dragged knuckles / There, and were captured there, / And packed in ships in shackles.'
Free Event. Please reserve place
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 28 Oct 2009 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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