Summary
Melanie McDonagh talks to novelist Josephine Hart about her mission to take Keats and Byron out of the salon and into the meanest streets of London
WHO'D have have thought that one of London's hot tickets would be for a poetry reading? It is quite a gathering that can see Ralph Fiennes, Edna O'Brien, Harold Pinter, Simon Callow, Bob Geldof, Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack pitch up at the British Library to read from Kipling's If, or excerpts from Paradise Lost, or Four Quartets. And an extraordinary number of London's most invited people turn up at King's Cross to listen, on a busy party night.See the full content of this document
Extract
How to Bring Poetry to the Asbo Generation
The British Library's Poetry hour is down to Josephine Hart. Otherwise known as the wife of Maurice Saatchi (ex-chairman of the Tory Party, cohead of the advertising empire with his brother Charles), she is herself an author of some notably bleak novels, including Damage, the film version of which starred Jeremy Irons, and producer of three plays.
But now she's come into her own, as a proselytiser for poetry. Especially poetry read aloud. What started as a small-scale endeavour for likeminded literary typ...See the full content of this document
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