GWYNETH LEWIS
Poet
Arts Practitioner/Writer Fellow sponsored jointly by the Stanford Humanities Center and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts
Monday, March 8 at 7:00pm
Stanford Humanities Center
Co-Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center
Gwyneth Lewis was appointed Wale's first National Poet from 2005-06. She has published six books of poetry in Welsh and English. Her first collection in English, Parables & Faxes (Bloodaxe, 1995) won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and was short listed for the Forward, as was her second book, Zero Gravity (Bloodaxe, 1998). Chaotic Angels collects her first three books of poetry in English.
Lewis’ first non-fiction book, Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression (Flamingo 2002), was shortlisted for the Mind Book of the Year and was recently broadcast as a play on BBC Radio 4. She is also a librettist and an award-winning playwright.
Her current project is Poetry and the Body, a scholarly survey of prosody, drawing on Celtic, English, and American poetry from earliest times to the present day, exploring the effect of meter and rhyme on poets’ and readers’ bodies. The whole project argues that prosody is far more than literary ornament - it’s fundamental to how we learn and develop language and an essential part of our ongoing health as creators of poetic discourse.
For previous How I Write Conversations go to Stanford on i-Tunes, link Arts and Humanities, and open the How I Write icon on the Featured Contributors
"How I Write" is a series of conversations with faculty and other advanced writers to explore the nuts and bolts, pleasures and pains, of all types of writing. While content is always an issue, the conversation will primarily focus on work styles, such as where, when, and how a writer composes, allowing us to examine habits, idiosyncrasies, techniques, trade secrets, hidden anxieties, and delights. We will discuss how a writer generates ideas, sustains large-scale projects, combines research with composition, overcomes various impediments and blocks, and cultivates stylistic innovations. Writing communities share experiences (even bad ones), so that all writers can learn and grow and Stanford is an exceptionally rich community for gaining such insights.
How I Write events, unless otherwise stated, take place in the Hume Writing Center in Margaret Jacks Hall (Bldg. 460) Basement .
