WRITERS’ CENTRE KINGSTON PRESENTed A LITERARY EVENT ABOUT Travelling
November THURSDAY 23rd : The picton room at kingston university
WITH GUEST SPEAKER alexander frater ALONGSIDE Albert pellicer AND Alison baverstock
About the event : The theme for this event was Travelling. Each of the three speakers responded with original talks and excerpts of articles and poetry relating to the theme - from Alexander Frater's explorations of North Korea, to Alison Baverstock's evocation of her son's travelogues, it was a remarkable, intimate 4th event in the WCK series.
About the speakers : Alexander Frater is a legendary figure in the modern history of travel writing. He was chief travel correspondent of the Observer, has won an unprecedented number of British Press Travel Awards and his books include Chasing the Monsoon, Stopping-Train Britain, Beyond the Blue Horizon, and Tales from the Torrid Zone, which is in part an autobiography discussing his childhood in Vanuatu. He has had an extensive career as a journalist and editor, commissioning and working with Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin, Norman Lewis and many other contemporaries. Miles Kington called him 'the funniest man who wrote for Punch since the war'. He currently lives in Richmond. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Frater
Albert Pellicer is a poet and artist born in Barcelona and based in London. He writes, performs and publishes in English, Catalan and Spanish. His poetry explores the margins of text and sound and looks into the concept of ‘timbre’ in poetry (the ‘exactitude of the unheard’- according to Deguy). He has been described as ‘the poet who writes in the air’ for his work on the whistling languages and the use of long kites to write verses. He has performed at various locations in the UK, including the International E-poetry Conference, 2005, and has taken part at several international festivals: Festival de Polipoesia (Barcelona, 2006); II International Festival Video Poetry in Buenos Aires (Argentina, 2005), for his piece Word of Mouth; Izmir Poetry Festival (Turkey, 2015) and at the International Literary Festival in Linares (Mexico, 2015). His poems have appeared in the magazines Openned, Shrike, Exiled Ink and Alba Londres. His lenticular piece Para–graph was displayed at Public Page- organised by Dartington College. He was granted two installations: Fennec commissioned by The Centre for Contemporary Poetics- Birkbeck in 2013 and Some Herd Of Noons, displayed at the Tree Hardy Gallery, London, 2014. In April 2016 he collaborated with visual poet Márton Koppány with the installation Asylum at Iklectik – London. He has also collaborated with sound artist Ximena Alarcón with the poem The Fumigation Of La Luna performed at: Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, 2009; ColombiAcústica, University of North Texas and Texas A&M University, 2008. He has worked with saxophonist Mark Matsena in Journey To Day and with composer Francisco Coll, Óxido: First Repetition, premiered at the Wigmore Hall in 2010, published by Faber & Faber Music. The film Breath of Sense by filmmaker Helen Petts is based on the translation of his poem into the whistled language of La Gomera, in The Canary Islands. His books are a verse novel in Catalan and English, El Lector de Núvols - 2011 and Fennec -2014. Within the Sound of a Parrot’s Voice will be published in 2018. He is the co-founder of Native Spirit Film Festival: an annual festival dedicated to promote indigenous cultures. He has organised workshops through his project Our Voices Rising aerial poems using long kites, that has received the backing of UnLtd Millennium Awards to run group poetry writing sessions at different institutions.
Alison Baverstock is a publisher and author. She co-founded MA Publishing at Kingston in 2006 and has been involved here ever since. She’s researched and written widely about the publishing industry, and has just been commissioned to write a sixth edition of How to market books (Routledge) which sells internationally and is widely translated. In addition to writing about publishing and the changing role of the author, she has published books on parenting and art for children. She is Director of the Kingston University Big Read. Having spent most of her life moving house, she now lives permanently in Kingston. @alisonbav