Tertulia

About

Tertulia is a regular salon event for people working with or interested in language from a range of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Founded by Phil Owen and Megan Wakefield, it is currently based at Arnolfini, in Bristol. This month: Dr James Bainbridge on Tessimond Tessimond had been a highly regarded English poet. In 1932 his work had appeared in the anthology New Signatures, alongside W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis. He was part of the new wave of writers in the 1930s, considered by Ronald Fuller as ‘among the more sane and promising' of the modernists. Yet by 1962, it seemed as if all trace of the man had disappeared. Two large inheritances were spent — half on nightclub hostesses, half on psychotherapists; his memory of his own life was lost through successive treatments of electro convulsive therapy. He had taken the form of a figure from his poetry: ‘the unnoticed, the unnoticeable man.' Since 2007, Dr James Bainbridge has been working to uncover the details of this disappearing life story. Through the poetry, lost documents, the poet's journals and letters, he will describe the processes involved in writing about the life of a largely unknown poet. Performance Lecture by Associate Artists Phil Owen Where is this voice coming from, and who am I when I can hear it?' Exploring the idea of the appropriated voice, via the revival of archaic song traditions in eastern Europe.