Acclaimed poet, critic and essayist Professor Tony Curtis is the Cellar Bards’ special guest on Friday, 11 October.

He will be reading from his latest poetry collection, ‘Leaving the Hills’, at The Cellar, Quay Street, Cardigan. Doors and the bar open at 7.30pm. Entry is £3, and open mic spots are available. Sign up on the door by 8pm.

Tony was born in Carmarthen and grew up there and in Pembrokeshire, where his grandmother’s family had lived for hundreds of years. He read English at Swansea University, did an MFA in Goddard College, Vermont and spent 40 years in education, from 1969 to 2009, as a school teacher, college lecturer and Wales’ first Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan, where he developed and directed the M. Phil in Writing.

He has written and edited over 40 books, was awarded a Gregory Award in 1972, won the National Poetry Competition in 1983, the Dylan Thomas Award for Spoken Poetry in 1993, had a Cholmondeley Award in 1998 and was awarded a D.Litt. in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

‘Leaving the Hills’ brings together poems that range from California to Carmarthen, and medieval Ireland to present-day Wales. Curtis emphasizes the precariousness and urgency of modern life. He explores the south Wales valleys, as he writes about the photographs taken in the days after the 1966 Aberfan mining disaster by Life magazine photographer I.C. ‘Chuck’ Rapoport.

Ultimately, ‘Leaving the Hills’ explores and defines the times in which we live. The title becomes a metaphor for that moment when we are forced to choose what to take and what to leave behind… In these poems, there is everything he would wish to save from the fire.

Cellar Bards is the only regular spoken word event in Cardigan, meeting on the second Friday in each month. There’s a great programme planned for the rest of this year, including guest readings and performances from Chrys Salt and Des Mannay.

See The Cellar Bards Facebook page for more information.