Book launchThursday 25 June 2015
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Poetry Reading: One More Civil Gesture — with C. E. J. Simons
Drinks reception: 7:00pm – 8:00pm
13/14 Cornwall Terrace (Outer Circle), London NW1 4QP
Organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
By C. E. J. (Christopher) Simons
Published by Isobar Press
The poems in One More Civil Gesture, the first full collection of poetry by C. E. J. Simons, were written in Japan, where he has lived since 2006. The book contains poems inspired by Japan, and also by frequent travel in Burma, China and Mongolia. Other poems in the book have been influenced by the literature and landscapes of Britain and Canada, Simons’ native countries. Poems in the collection frequently take their subjects from singularities of nature and art – things that are wonderful not because they are unusual or rare, but because they deserve wonder: animal life; the seasons; family; myth; well-known Shakespeare plays. The gestures of these poems are ‘civil’ in two senses: in their bold and exciting use of inherited forms, whether Western or Japanese; and in their aspiration to eschew self-expression in search of representations of the human capacity to engage with the other – to be civilised through immersion in the unknown.
Professor Simons read from the new book and discuss the capabilities and challenges of contemporary formal verse poetry, including the use of verse forms inherited from English and Japanese literature. Simons also read some work from his other books, and from the works of poets who have influenced the development of the poems in the book—poets such as Shakespeare, Keats, W. B. Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop, and Paul Muldoon.
About the contributors
C. E. J. (Christopher) Simons
C. E. J. (Christopher) Simons is Senior Associate Professor of British Literature at International Christian University (ICU), Tokyo. He holds a DPhil in British Romanticism from Lincoln College, Oxford, and in 2003 he held the Harper-Wood Studentship in Creative Writing at St John’s College Cambridge. He has published on Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Yeats, Emily Dickinson, and Sylvia Plath, most recently contributing a chapter to the Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth (Oxford University Press, 2015). He has previously published two poetry pamphlets with wordwolf press: Progress Bar (2010) and No Distinguishing Features (2011). His poems have won prizes in major UK competitions, including the Cardiff International Poetry Competition and the Wigtown Competition. His criticism and poetry have appeared in publications including the Independent, Isis, Magma, Oxford Poetry, PN Review, and The Times Literary Supplement.