As we move towards the centenary of the start of the First World War in 2014, the impact of the war culturally continues to be felt. Nowhere is this more evident than in the poetry of the war. Harry Ricketts' new book, Strange Meetings, looks at the actual encounters, or near-encounters between the war poets and the influence they had on each other, including Siegfried Sassoon's first, blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys and bacon at Eddie Marsh's breakfasts before the war, through famous moments like Sassoon's encouragement of Wilfred Owen when both were in hospital at the same time, to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomas' widow and Ivor Gurney in 1932, and the last, strange lunch of Sassoon and David Jones in 1964, half a century after the great war began.

We also encounter Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg (born in Bristol), Robert Nicols and Edmund Blunden. Ricketts' unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships, marking their responses to each other's work and showing how these affected their own poetry - one potent strand, for example, is the profound influence of Rupert Brooke, both as a model to follow and a burden to reject. Ricketts provides a fresh sense of Great War poetry, conveying all the excitement and frustration of poetic creation, and demonstrating how the whole notion of what poetry should be 'about' became fractured and changed forever by the terrible experiences of the war. Harry Rickets will be in discussion with Paul Gough, whose recent book, 'A Terrible Beauty': War, Art and Imagination 1914-1918 covered the visual arts and the war.

Fee: £4.00 / £3.00.