This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
...
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
(Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge)

I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life
(Frank O’Hara, Meditations)

From Virgil’s account of the sacking of Troy to Sir John Betjeman’s preoccupation with architecture, poets have always shown a concern with place and, in particular, the city. At the forefront of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture celebrations have been their ‘Mersey Sound’ poets (Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten), and few landmarks or institutions are without their own poet: be they a favourite son like Barnsley’s Ian MacMillan, or adopted scribes, such as New York’s Frank O’Hara.

But whereas a poet’s location can be seen as a source of inspiration that their powers of imagination and vision can transcend and even shape, increasingly this relationship is understood in more functional terms. ‘Eco-critics’ like Neal Astley argue poetry should reflect enlightened thinking on climate change. ‘Psychogeography’ attempts to highlight the ways in which landscape shapes a writer’s words – regardless of whether the writer wants it to or not. Plato wanted the poets banished from his Republic; now councils and even rail networks are recruiting poets to provide a sense of identity and heritage. But woe betide those ‘cosmopolitan scum’ – as Hugh MacDiarmid once called Alexander Trocchi – who dare to write outside their roots.

Are today’s poets-in-residence any different from the epic poets of antiquity, mythologising and uniting communities around their shared vision? Can poetry ever really survive in a globalised, hyper-mobile and individualistic age? At a time when we are being urged to reduce our carbon footprint, should poets stay closer to home and focus on the familiar and local? What place the poet in the twenty-first century?

The session will feature poetry readings from:
-Guo Yue, Chinese bamboo flutes soloist and composer; author Music, Food and Love.
-Jay Bernard, winner, London Respect Slam (2004) and Foyle Young Poets of the Year (2005).
-Leela Gandhi, Professor of English, University of Chicago; author, Measures of home: Poems (2000).
-Ion Martea, poet; commissioning editor, film, Culture Wars
-Inua Ellams, poet; author, 13 Fairy Negro Tales
-Siddhartha Bose, poet; PhD student on the grotesque