Folger Shakespeare Library to Welcome Simon Armitage & Peter Oswald, 2/3

On Tuesday, February 3 at 7:30 pm, the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library continues its 46th season with a reading by two voices from the world of British poetry and theatre-Simon Armitage and Peter Oswald. The post-reading conversation will be moderated by Paul Smith, Director of the British Council, USA. Tickets for this event are $15 and can be purchased at the Folger Box Office at 202.544.7077 or by visiting www.folger.edu/poetry.

Simon Armitage is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Seeing Stars; Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid; The Shout: Selected Poems, which was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and his first collection, Zoom!, a Poetry Society Book Choice. Several of his collections have also been short-listed for the Whitbread Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize.

He has also published fiction and written extensively for radio, television, film, and theater, including the libretto for the opera The Assassin Tree, the play Mister Heracles, based on Euripides's The Madness of Heracles, and the 1992 Xanadu. His translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was selected as a Book of the Year by both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Armitage was named the Millennium Poet in 1999 and a Commander of the British Empire in 2010. In 2012, as an artist in residence at London's South Bank Centre, he conceived and curated Poetry Parnassus, a gathering of world poets and poetry from every Olympic nation as part of Britain's Cultural Olympiad, a landmark event generally recognized as the biggest coming together of international poets in history. He is currently Professor of Poetry at the University of Sheffield.

Peter Oswald is a poet, playwright and actor. His most recent poetry collection is The Reply to the Light. Oswald has performed his poetry in venues including The Rose Theatre, South West Storytelling Festival, and the Globe Theatre. Mr. Oswald has served as Playwright-in-Residence at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London, Dartington Hall, Devon, and at the Finborough Theatre, London. His verse translation of Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart, first produced by the Donmar Warehouse, transferred to Broadway in 2009 for a Tony Award-winning run.

From January 27- March 8, 2015, Folger Theatre will present Peter Oswald's translation of Schiller's Mary Stuart featuring Holly Twyford as Queen Elizabeth and Kate Eastwood Norris as Mary, Queen of Scots.

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