Poetry

Stephanie Sy-Quia Interviewed by Sophie Ratcliffe

Amnion CANCELLED
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 10:00am Sat 26 Saturday, 26 March 2022 See this event
Katherine Rundell

Super-infinite: The Transformations of John Donne
Weston Lecture Theatre 6:00pm Sat 26 Saturday, 26 March 2022 See this event
Alastair Lack

Oxford Poets with Alastair Lack SOLD OUT
St John’s College 2:00pm Sun 27 Sunday, 27 March 2022 See this event
Allie Esiri, Natascha McElhone, Ronni Ancona, Mark Quartley and Diana Quick

Poetry for Every Day of the Year
Sheldonian Theatre 4:00pm Sun 27 Sunday, 27 March 2022 See this event
Richard Harries

Hearing God in Poetry: Fifty Poems for Lent and Easter
Bodleian: Divinity School 4:00pm Mon 28 Monday, 28 March 2022 See this event
Joe Moshenska Interviewed by Alison Gomm

Making Darkness Light: The Lives and Times of John Milton
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 6:00pm Mon 28 Monday, 28 March 2022 See this event
Mark Ford, Lyndall Gordon, Jason Harding, Hannah Sullivan and Geoffrey Streatfeild

T. S. Eliot: A Celebration of his Life, Work, and Legacy, and of the T.S. Eliot Foundation and Prize
Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Thu 31 Thursday, 31 March 2022 See this event
Jeremy Robson, Martin Reed and Andy Croft

A Celebration of Vernon Scannell
Weston Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Fri 1 Friday, 1 April 2022 See this event
Marlene Hauser and Elizabeth Hazen Chaired by Rose Solari

Women’s Work, Women’s Words
Bodleian: Divinity School 10:00am Sat 2 Saturday, 2 April 2022 See this event
Saida Agostini Interviewed by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Let the Dead In
Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Sat 2 Saturday, 2 April 2022 See this event
Maureen Lipman, Norma Winstone, Christian Garrick, Art Themen and Jeremy Robson

Festival 25 Celebration: An evening of Song, Humour, Poetry, and Jazz
Sheldonian Theatre 7:30pm Sun 3 Sunday, 3 April 2022 See this event

Festival information:

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.