Poetry After Kafka

“The world now is increasingly and ever more threateningly Kafkaesque” writes David Constantine. Kafka is “a sort of given, the premise on which knowingly or unknowingly many writers nowadays work”.

Come and hear three contemporary poets – Francesca Beard, Gale Burns, and David Constantine  – present their own work, read an excerpt from Kafka and discuss his influence on writing and poetry. With an introduction and the participation of Professor Carolin Duttlinger.

The meeting will be chaired by Dr Ian Ellison.

Francesca Beard, who comes from London by way of Malaysia, is an internationally acclaimed spoken word artist who makes interactive, transformational work for organisations like the BBC, The British Council and Apples and Snakes. She has been called 'The Queen of British performance poetry' (London Metro). www.francescabeard.com

Gale Burns is a prizewinning poet, and recently poet in residence at Kingston University, University Hospital Lewisham and a Hawthorden Fellow. He convenes the Shuffle Poetry series and is a member of Poets for the Planet and a psychotherapist. www.galeburns.co.uk

David Constantine was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2020, having published a dozen or so collections of poetry. He was for thirty years a university teacher of German language and literature and is an editor and translator of Hölderlin, Goethe, Kleist and Brecht.

Carolin Duttlinger is Professor of German Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford and the Ockenden Fellow in German at Wadham College. She co-directs the Oxford Kafka Research Centre and is the Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded “Kafka’s Transformative Communities”. She is the author of several books on Kafka. Twitter: @CaroDuttlinger

Ian Ellison is the post-doctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded "Kafka's Transformative Communities Project” at the University of Oxford, where he is based at Wadham College. Twitter: @OxfordKafka

In cooperation with Oxford University, the AHRC-funded Kafka’s Transformative Communities Project and The Shuffle Poetry.

Free entry but booking essential: Poetry After Kafka | University of Oxford