Death Poets Society

Love and Loss: Poetry at funerals and in bereavement

Sunday 2nd Nov, 8pm

North London Tavern, Kilburn High Road

Tickets £8 through kilburnliteraryfestival.co.uk and on the door

 Bereavement can lead people to seek solace in poetry for the first time, or indeed, to express themselves by writing their own poetry for the first time. Discussing and reciting poems written in anger, confusion, sadness or celebration are:

Jack Rooke – stand-up poet and comedian from Watford. Jack is an associate artist of The Roundhouse and a part of Soho Theatre’s Comedy Lab 2014.
Jack hosts the award-winning stand-up poetry night Bang Said The Gun, the poetry/comedy Amphitheatre at Bestival and has created work for The Independent, Cosmopolitan, BBC Radio 1, The Guardian and Channel 4. He is also an ambassador for male suicide prevention charity CALM and curates the ‘Save The Male’ showcases to raise awareness that suicide is the biggest killer of young men in the UK.

Tim Wells – poet
‘London poetry landmark’ – TLS
‘suedehead bard of N16’ – the Guardian
‘bizarre character from the East End’ – The Times
‘a neatly twisted line in rhetoric’ – NME

Catherine Fried – sculptor, writer and authority on the work of her late husband Erich, a best-selling poet in Germany and his native Austria. As a boy of 17, Erich Fried fled the Holocaust for England and settled in Kilburn where he lived and worked for 30 years. Much of his poetry was political.  Later he was celebrated for his love poems.  He also wrote about death.

Richard Putt – a director of Leverton & Sons.  With 42 years’ experience as a dedicated funeral director, he is the ideal barometer of changing funeral traditions and the increasing importance of poetry in the lives of the bereaved.

 Audience members will also be invited to recite short poems of their own.