The Londonist Literary List

By London_Drew Last edited 209 months ago
The Londonist Literary List
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The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com.

Those of us with an addiction to lists may have looked on folornly at this recent compilation of no less than 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - but it did make us think of a drinking game to play. It includes a shot glass, a bottle of cheap vodka, three pairs of dice and the British Library. Anyone interested in the rules should email...

Tonight

Martín Espada (pictured), the poet and professor, is a Latino New Yorker whose work is indebted to the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda who in 1971 won the The Nobel Prize in Literature. Here is an extract from one of Neruda's poems If You Forget Me:

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me. In this workshop Close Readings with Martin Espada, he covers several of Neruda's poems, exploring their political and historical significance, and inviting participants to bring their own thoughts on the work, in this, part of Poetry International Series at the Royal Albert Hall. £12, 5.45pm, QEH Riverside Room, the Royal Albert Hall, Tickets Here.

The explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison discusses his new book The Seventy Great Journeys in History - and he's qualified to discuss the topic having achieved the first land crossing of South America at its widest point and the first river crossing of South America from North to South. £6/£4, 6.30pm, British Library Conference Centre, St Pancras.

Finally tonight, Louise Doughty, writer, critic and author of the "Novel in a Year" column for the Telegraph, will adjudicate a discussion called "Writing by Numbers" which looks at the virtues of teaching people to write with panelists Terence Blacker, writer and newspaper columnist, Fay Weldon, novelist and Chair of Creative Writing at Brunel University and Russell Celyn-Jones, who teaches on the creative writing MA at UEA. £7, 7pm, Guardian Newsroom, 60 Farringdon Road, EC1R 3GA, Tickets Here.

Thursday

It's Book Slam time again - catch it this month before it moves from Cherry Jam to pastures northerner. This month, they’ll be singing the songs of lost youth in the company of Ian Marchant, author of The Longest Crawl, plus a performaces by Jamie Woon, Inua Ellams ("one of the capital’s finest word doctors"), and DJ Farai. £2 before 8pm, then £5, 7pm door open, Cherry Jam, 58 Porchester Road, W2.

Simon Schama's new book, The Power of Art, is an exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. Schama closes in on turning points in the lives of eight great artists who created something unprecedented and altered the course of art forever. Tonight he discusses his book and explores in further depth the extraordinary power of art. 7pm, £7/£5, 0870 420 2777 for tickets - Institute of Education, Logan Hall, 20 Bedford Way, WC1H 0AL.

Last Updated 24 October 2006