Headingley LitFest: Eat With Adonis

Friday, 29 January 2016

Eat With Adonis

Adonis

This is one of a series of previews for the forthcoming LitFest, which begins on 29 February and ends on 22 March. The printed brochure is on its way.

Ali Ahmad Said Esber, also known by the pen-name Adonis or Adunis (Arabic: أدونيس), is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator considered one of the most influential and dominant Arab poets of the modern era. He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the twentieth century, exerting a great influence on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world. His dozen books of translation include the first complete Arabic version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (2002). He lives in Paris, aged 86.

Hear some of his poems (in English), listen to music from the Arab world and and sit down for a Lebanese meal. Mint's shawarmas are exceptionally good!

Listen to the poems in Arabic - http://tinyurl.com/j4lrslt - الاستماع إلى قصائد بالعربية

£10 Mint Café, North Lane
7.15pm

Adonis wall poem in Leiden, Netherlands

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LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.