Poetry please

As readers of this blog know, poetry’s something of an obsession, so you can imagine my excitement about the Spectator’s second poetry reading on 25 November. The evening is going to feature some of the most exciting voices in contemporary poetry.

Frieda Hughes has extraordinary literary genes, but also an astonishing voice of her own. In 2007, her fourth collection of poetry, Forty-Five, addressed for the first time her life as the daughter of two of our best-loved poets: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. A painter as well as a poet, her new collection, The Book of Mirrors is out now.

Scottish poet Don Paterson has just won the Forward prize for his fourth collection, Rain.  He’ll be joined by the Spectator’s poetry editor Hugo Williams, who will be reading from his new collection West End Final, as well as revisiting earlier work like his Eliot prize winning volume Billy’s Rain. Hugo has also just been short-listed for this year's Eliot prize.

Film and poetry meet in the work of Chris Greenhalgh. An award winning poet, Chris has just adapted his first novel into the forthcoming film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. His exploration of the relationship between Coco and Igor began in poem form and I am hoping that he might be persuaded to share that poem with us as well.  

Both Don and Hugo starred in my '40 poems You Should Know' supplement, and all four of our readers come extremely high on my list of great poets writing now. Come and see if you agree... Guests will also have the chance to buy an advance copy of my own collection, Restricted View, which is published on 1 December. (Hurrah!)