Free talk and poetry reading – free wine – and two award-winning writers, Tim Birkhead and Paul Farley

POETRY AND is back with two prize-winning writers, a poet and a scientist who meet in their passion for birds’ eggs. POETRY AND, curated by Professor of Poetry Ruth Padel, is a series of free poetry readings in Gilbert Scott’s Gothic chapel, King's College London, which celebrates poetry’s power to connect across all boundaries and disciplines.

TIM BIRKHEAD, zoologist and ornithologist, is Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Sheffield. His acclaimed books The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology, Bird Sense: What it Is Like to Be a Bird, and The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a Bird's Egg, are gems of science writing: “Superb ... like having the top of your head lifted off and its contents deliciously stirred: no one after reading this book could think science removes us from feeling” (Observer). His TED talk, The Early Birdwatchers, has been viewed over a million times. Every year since 1972 he has observed not only guillemots nesting on Skomer cliffs in Wales but also human engagement with birds, and collectors’ strange and desperate attempts to acquire ever rarer eggs.

PAUL FARLEY, Professor of Poetry at Lancaster University, is a prize-winning poet, writer and broadcaster. He is the recipient of an E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and presenter of BBC 4’s poetry programme The Echo Chamber. His award-winning collections include The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You, The Ice Age, Tramp in Flames, and The Dark Film. The travel book he co–authored with Michael Symmons Roberts, Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wilderness, was serialized as BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He is currently working on a book about an egg collector.

Read more about Tim Birkhead and Paul Farley in King’s online poetry magazine Wild Court http://wildcourt.co.uk/poetry-and/