Harry Ricketts Poetry Reading

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Poet and biography Harry Ricketts was at Warwick University on Tuesday 27th December to talk about his new book Strange Meetings. As he talked about the process of writing the book I was struck by how much fiction and nonfiction intertwine in their techniques and challenges. Writing involves thinking about perspective, and there are many angles this could take. Framing a book with real meetings and links between a select number of war poets is an intriguing idea and the book reads very well.

The highpoint for me was hearing the poem Quarantine Island. A strange choice perhaps, but the following words reminded me of this strange process called a PhD.

'There will be days of sudden calm,
nights when stars burn into your head.
World turns strange and yet the same.'

It was fascinating to have a chat with him afterwards about the process of writing as I hope to use poetry in some form in my creative piece. Folktales often have rhymes and lines of poetry within them, and I'd like to experiment with this in modern fairy tales.

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