Thursday 22 October 2009, 5.00pm 
The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG
as part of the British Academy's 2009 Literature Week

Organised in association with the Institute of English Studies, University of London

The British Academy is delighted to host The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour as part of its Literature Week programme.

The Poetry Hour performs (as on this occasion) away from its institutional base at the British Library. For each such evening, the novelist Josephine Hart provides her own insightful commentary to poems read by leading actors and literary and theatrical friends. She matches her readers to her choice of poets and poems, so that her audiences will hear even well-known and well-loved poems and passages lifted off the page, and as if for the first time. Her Words that Burn: how to read poetry and why: Poems from Eight Great Poets was published in 2009, with a CD with readings by Eileen Atkins, Edward Fox, Charles Dance, Dominic West and others. Catching Life by the Throat, also with a CD, went into all schools teaching 12 to 18 year olds.

JOSEPHINE HART. Born and raised in Ireland, Josephine Hart was a Director of Haymarket Publishing and founded Gallery Poets (now the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour at the British Library) before going on to produce a number of West End plays, including the award winning The House of Bernarda Alba by Lorca, Noël Coward’s The Vortex, The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch and Let Us Go Then, You and I. She presented the series Books by My Bedside for Thames TV. She is the bestselling author of Damage (filmed by Louis Malle), Sin (adapted by Théâtre Blu), Oblivion, The Stillest Day and The Reconstructionist (filmed by Roberto Ando). Her most recent novel is The Truth about Love (2009).

The actors taking part were confirmed as Charles Dance, Kenneth Cranham and Elizabeth McGovern.

The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour

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