Name: An Evening with Carol Ann Duffy and John Sampson
Start: 2024-11-14T19:30:00+00:00
End: 2024-11-14T20:30:00+00:00
Location: Greenside Church, 1b Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, EH7 5AB

An Evening with Carol Ann Duffy and John Sampson

This November, join us for a very special evening of poetry and music with award-winning poet Carol Ann Duffy and multi-instrumentalist John Sampson. Duffy will be reading from her latest works, Earth Prayers and Three Wise Men, as well as from many of her earlier collections.
Earth Prayers
The wonders of nature have inspired poets for centuries, stretching far back beyond the Romantics. Beautifully curated by Carol Ann Duffy, the poems in Earth Prayers span widely across time, but in their moments of joy, empathy or difference, even the earliest poems reveal a concern for the welfare of our planet. Duffy brings these early eco-poems into conversation with contemporary voices writing into the environmental crisis, and through this dialogue sounds a clarion call to cherish and defend the planet while we can.
Three Wise Men
Seeking refuge from a snowstorm, a nameless traveller is welcomed into an ancient hall to warm their bones and fill their stomach, if they will hear the stories of three wise men and judge whom amongst them tells the truth.
What follows are three tales of despair and devotion, of indigence and immortality. A lovelorn youth plies the object of his affections with golden rings, partridges and pear trees. An elderly man, tired of life, finds himself having cheated death and quite unsure of what to do next.
About the Authors
Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester, where she is Professor and Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her poetry has received many awards, including the Signal Prize for Children's Verse, the Whitbread, Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes, and the Lannan and E. M. Forster Prize in America. She was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009 to 2019. Her many collections include Mean Time, Love Poems and The Bees, which won the Costa Poetry Award. She was made a DBE in the 2015 New Year Honours list. In 2021, she was awarded the international lifetime achievement award the Golden Wreath for her achievements in poetry.
John Sampson is an Edinburgh-based professional musician, composer and actor. A well known and loved performer on the UK music scene for over forty years and a respected actor for almost as long, he has also appeared extensively on the continent, particularly in Germany where his accomplished brand of musical comedy and cabaret is held in great affection, and his classical and jazz performance skills are highly regarded.