Who Gets to Love the 'Great British Poets'?

From Wordsworth to Blake, Keats to Tennyson, the British poetry canon is replete with influential literary figures, encountered for decades in classrooms across the globe. But who is enfranchised to appreciate, and take inspiration from, the great British poets of the past? What does this question reveal about poetry’s relationship to privilege and power? And why and how are some poets co-opted for nationalist ends?

In this event, presented by English PEN in partnership with Keats House, three contemporary poets will discuss their appreciation for British heritage poetry, how it has intervened in their lives, and how it has influenced their work. They will also reflect on the ways in which their reading of the canon is shaped, enriched, and complicated by the positions and contexts from which they read, and the complex ways in which the culturally constructed image of the writer and the reader intersect with notions of race and class.