An evening of poetry readings, art and live music exploring how poetry, music and art interrelate.
Simon Raworth and Stephen Engelhard bring the music of Robert Schumann and the poetry of Heinrich Heine together in a performance of Dichterliebe.
Stephen has been an active amateur musician since childhood. He has been a regular participant at Dartington Summer School, playing in piano classes and many chamber music ensembles. He is also a member of Brighton Festival Chorus and East Sussex Bach Choir.
Simon has appeared with Brighton Consort (Bach Cantata), Regency Singers (various), New Network Singers (Clive Whitburn song cycle), Sussex Musicians’ Club (madrigals, duets and solo art song), East Sussex Bach Choir (St John Passion, St Matthew Passion), Laughton Village Choir (Puccini, Bach and Handel) Esterhazy Choir (Rossini Petite Messe Solonnelle) and the Baroque Collective Singers (Faure Requiem, Rossini Petite Messe Solennelle). He has been guest soloist in choral workshops – Dido and Aeneas & Mozart Requiem for Christ’s Hospital Choral Society and Handel’s Messiah. Other recent performances include baritone solo in Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols in St Anne’s, Lewes and song cycle recitals at Holy Trinity, Hurstpierpoint and St Peter’s Church, West Blatchington, Hove.
Michael Joseph enjoys the creative process by switching between drawing, painting and sculpture, responding and editing from one work to the next. Tonight Michael will explore the relationship he enjoys between art and music and how he uses music to influence his artistic creativity.
No fewer than 8 poets feature in tonight’s concert, reciting poetry that references both art and music
Judith Cair studied English Literature at Cambridge and York Universities before becoming a potter and working in rural potteries in Derbyshire and Devon. Her poetry has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. In 2013 a pamphlet of her work was published by Pighog Press and in 2014 she was the featured poet in the magazine Envoi.
Pratibha Castle – BOTN, Pushcart and Michael Marks nominated – is an Irish born poet living in West Sussex. Widely anthologised and published, her work was acknowledged in numerous competitions. Her second pamphlet Miniskirts in The Waste Land was a Poetry Book Society winter selection 2023. Her full collection is anticipating publication.
Ted Gooda is a Sussex-based poet, playwright and ghostwriter. She has a poetry-based show at this year’s Brighton Fringe, Mannequim, and her debut poetry pamphlet, Silence & Selvedge was published in October 2024.
Chris Hardy is a prize winning poet whose latest collection was published by Shoestring Press. He plays guitar and is secretary of the Chichester poetry Stanza.
Camilla Lambert has been writing poetry since retirement in 2007, has had a pamphlet Grapes in the Crater published, and also many individual poems in poetry journals and anthologies. She was involved in setting up the Binsted Arts Festival which ran for 5 years, and since moving into Arundel she has been co-organising the Arundel Literary Festival.
Keith Massey is conscious of the poet Louis MacNeice’s fascination with ‘things being various’ and often writes about interesting individuals, the natural world and works of art. He is currently working on a series of poems in response to Turner’s Sussex paintings.
Mandy Pannett is a creative writing tutor and author of several poetry collections and novellas. Recently she collaborated on a poetry, music and art project about the South Downs.
Barry Smith is a both a poet and an arts festival producer, currently Director of the South Downs Poetry Festival. Barry edits Poetry & All That Jazz, curates the poetry for Blakefest and is Patron of the Shelley Memorial Project. As a poet, his debut collection Performance Rites (Waterloo Press, 2021) was followed by Reeling and Writhing (Dempsey & Windle, 2023). His poetry has been widely published and shortlisted for the BBC Proms Poetry, the Culture Matters Bread & Roses awards and nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize.