An evening of poetry, music and humour from two award-winning writers and performers. Here in the house where the Romantic poet John Keats lived towards the end of his young life, Chrys and Alan will be presenting their own, much admired work.
Chrys is a theatre director, performer and poet whose work has been broadcast on Radios 3 and 4 and performed in Europe and the US. She is the founder and Artistic Director of The Bakehouse, a thriving Arts Centre in Dumfries and Galloway. Her new collection of poetry, Grass, has attracted rapturous reviews for its vitality and lyrical inventiveness. Her reading at Keats House will include a sequence of poems from Grass dealing with the extraordinary life and work of Angus McPhee, the legendary grass-weaving artist from South Uist.
Alan was the winner of the first Wigtown Poetry Award, Scotland’s largest. He has performed his songs throughout the UK and recorded five albums with the singer Patty Vetta. His plays include The Mother Tongue, starring Prunella Scales, and The Edge of the Land, about the great floods of 1953. He has written for The Times for more than thirty years, interviewing major artists from the fields of music, literature and theatre. He was described by the late John Rety, co-founder of Torriano Poetry, as “ a latterday Sydney Carter.” He will be joined at Keats House by the actor and singer Charlotte Moore.