Online Book Event: The Penguin Book of Elegy

Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practised by the Romans, revitalized by the poets of the Renaissance and continuing down to the present day, it speaks eloquently and affectingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. It gives shape and meaning to memories too painful to contemplate, and answers our desire to fix in words what would otherwise slip our grasp.

In this talk, Professor Stephen Regan will introduce his new publication The Penguin Book of Elegy, edited with Andrew Motion. The Penguin Book of Elegy traces the elegy from its Classical roots in the work of Theocritus, Virgil and Ovid down to modern compositions exploring personal tragedy and collective grief by such celebrated voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Denise Riley. It was 'Poetry Book of the Month' in The Observer in October, where the selection of poems was described as having been chosen 'with a scholarly discernment mixed with a wild-card flair'. 

Stephen Regan's books include Irish Writing: An Anthology of Irish Literature in English 1789-1939 (2004) and The Sonnet (2019). He has taught at Ruskin College, Oxford; Royal Holloway, University of London; and Durham University, where he is Professor Emeritus. He is currently a Research Associate at the University of Melbourne.

This is a free online event and open to all. Please register in advance for the Zoom link.