Tuesday 12 December, 7:45pm
POETRY / SPOKEN WORD
Doors & bar 6:00pm | Performance 7:45pm, ends c. 8:45pm, no interval
Tickets £22 / £11 (under 25)
Michael Symmons Roberts, poet & reader
'informed by a sense of grace, of transcendence... beautifully expressed, subtly luminous'
- The Guardian
Whitbread Prize-winning poet and author Michael Symmons Roberts reads from his own poetry in the second in our three candlelit Advent events. Much admired for his lyricism and metaphysical writing, the evening includes poems from his most recent book, Ransom, a vivid exploration of what it means to be alive and the search for hope in a fallen, wounded world.
Michael Symmons Roberts' poetry has won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and been shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize and his continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Roberts' broadcast work includes the BBC4 verse film Men Who Sleep in Cars – described by the Observer as 'a work of genius', A Fearful Symmetry – for Radio 4 – which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and Last Words commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. His 8th collection of poetry Ransom was published by Cape in March 2021.