How and why does classical antiquity live on in us and in our worlds? Join us online for poetry readings by Lesley Saunders and Josephine Balmer, framed by the evocative surroundings of our gallery of classical casts. Their performance responds to the idea expressed by the classical scholar Edmund Richardson that ‘we work with fragments, we work with dreams, we work with the longing for lost texts to be discovered, for every broken thing to be repaired…’

The event will be pre-recorded and the video will premiere on 27th March at 6pm and be available for the duration of the festival. The video will feature a Question and Answer section.

The poets would love to answer any questions you might have for them. The registration form will give you an opportunity to ask questions in advance of the event. We will do our best to answer them during the recording.

Watch the teaser videos below, and register to get a useful reminder!

This event is part of the Cambridge Festival 2021.

Josephine Balmer’s most recent collection, The Paths of Survival (Shearsman), was short-listed for the 2017 London Hellenic Prize and was a Poetry Book of the Year in The Times. Other collections include The Word for Sorrow (Salt, 2009), Chasing Catullus: Poems, Translations and Transgressions (Bloodaxe, 2004) and the chapbook Letting Go: mourning sonnets (2017). She has also published the translations Catullus: Poems of Love and Hate and Classical Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 2004 & 1996). Her acclaimed volume, Sappho: Poems and Fragments, was short-listed in 1989 for the inaugural US Lambda Literary Award for Poetry and has recently been reissued in an expanded edition to include newly-discovered fragments (Bloodaxe, 2018). Her study Piecing Together the Fragments: Translating Classical Verse, Creating Contemporary Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

"Lesley Saunders reads Millefiori" © Two Rivers Press

Lesley Saunders is a poet, translator (of modern Portuguese poetry) and educationist, whose poetry has won several awards and been broadcast on radio; she is particularly keen on poetic collaborations. She will be reading from her most recent collection Nominy-Dominy.