'Poets in Purgatory' Video

TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Contemporary poets read from their translations of the Purgatorio and from their poems about Dante. After Dante: Poets in Purgatory, edited by Nick Havely with Bernard O'Donoghue, was published by Arc Poetry in July and marks the 700th anniversary of the poet's death in exile at Ravenna on 14 September 1321. This new complete version of Dante's Purgatorio is by sixteen contemporary poets who enter into dialogue with the original by rendering it into a variety of Anglophone voices: American, Australian, British, Irish, Jamaican,Scottish, Singaporean. The video of the launch (on 10 November 2021) includes nine of the poets reading parts of the cantos they have translated and some of their poems about Dante's Purgatory; it also features poems by a predecessor and a contemporary of Dante. The programme begins with an introduction to another book on Dante's work: John Dickson Batten: Illustrations for Dante's 'Inferno', edited by Pater Hainsworth, also published this year (by Panarc International). The event was supported by TORCH, the Oxford Dante Society and Lady Margaret Hall. Speakers/contributors (alphabetical order): Jane Draycott; Steve Ellis; Andrew Fitzsimons; Lorna Goodison; Peter Hainsworth; Nick Havely; Angela Jarman; Jan Kemp; Jamie McKendrick; Bernard O'Donoghue; A.E. Stallings; Patrick Worsnip.