Poetry Reading Group
Tuesday 6th May
Topping & Company Booksellers of Edinburgh, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
6.45pm
7pm
We have three new selections for our poetry reading group! With Zain as our guide, we will be immersing ourselves in a range of exciting voices in the world of poetry. If you’re a fellow poet, a poetry fan, or just looking for your next read, please come along for a fun evening of chatting all things verse!
In May, we will be chatting about a poetry classic, Crush by Richard Siken. Siken’s verse is electric in its examination of grief, infatuation and memory. It has become one of the cornerstones of modern queer poetry and continues to inspire so many writers today.
Here are the dates for the upcoming reading groups:
Tuesday 6th May - Crush by Richard Siken
Tuesday 24th June - Stags Leap by Sharon Olds
Wednesday 16th July - Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
There’s no need to prepare but if you feel like it, please feel free to mention a poem, line or stanza you particularly liked (or disliked!) from the collection over the course of the evening.
About Crush:
The 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets competition: a powerful, confessional, erotic collection
An Atlantic choice for “Best American Poetry of the 21st Century (So Far)”
Finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry
“Siken writes about love, desire, violence, and eroticism with a cinematic brilliance and urgency that makes this one of the best books of contemporary poetry.”―Victoria Chang, Huffington Post
Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by obsession and love. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken’s voice is striking.
In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”