A Living Almanac
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
An almanac is a book of days, a calendar, and a diary but it differs from these, as it gathers together all kinds of lore - weather forecasts, astrology, auguries, folk remedies and proverbial wisdom. It is above all proleptic not retrospective – it isn’t a journal of what has happened but of the year ahead. It builds on experience of the past to anticipate what might lie in store and equip its user with means to meet adversity – and forestall it. Its temporality is attached to present and the future – this is important as we try to re-imagine ways of being during the Anthropocene, when climate change and other serious threats are growing. Many writers and artists are engaging with place; a Living Almanac will engage with time, through writing, drawing, dreams and memories.
This workshop is led by Professor Marina Warner and Dr Steve Willey. They are joined by a poet, Dry Briony Hughes.
Dr Briony Hughes will be reading from her poem 'Weather Dialogue' which borrows the figures for the weather noted by hand in Edward Holyoke’s (1742) Amed Almanack Diary, positioning this archived object in conversation with the digital marbling of the COP26 branding materials as designed by JohnsonBanks.
Contact name:
Sue Wiseman
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Dr Briony Hughes
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Dr Briony Hughes is lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway University of London. She is the 2023/2024 Poet in Residence at the University of Surrey. Her single-authored publications include Rhizomes (Broken Sleep Books), Milk (Hem Press), Dorothy (Broken Sleep Books), Microsporidial (Sampson Low), and RHIZOME or TAPROOT (Paper View Books). Her limited-edition artists’ books have been collected by the National Poetry Library, The British Library, Senate House Library, The Bodleian, and the Kings College London Special Collections. She is editor at Osmosis Press, co-edits the HOW(ever) How2 Digital Archive Project at SUNY Buffalo, and edis the poetry feature in Resurgence and Ecologist magazine.
- Dr Stephen Willey
- Prof Marina Warner