An evening with Gordon Walmsley and Christopher Sand-Iversen
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In Dreams of a Lifetime, the poet Gordon Walmsley casts his gaze back over the span of his life, writing with a maturity of feeling that allows nature, childhood memories and observations of the contemporary world to stream freely through the poems. He blends the roomy and convivial rhythms of the American South with the lapidary quietude he encountered on first coming to Denmark, and in that space of thought and light which he came to appreciate, his mood rests in the moment and presence of being. Dreams of a Lifetime is attuned both to the cycles of nature and of human consciousness, and as such is a prescient voice in our current time.
Gordon Walmsley grew up in New Orleans and lives in Copenhagen. He is the author of eight books of poems and a poetically constructed novel. He has translated from several languages, and founded and edits The Copenhagen Review. He has a degree in German Literature from Princeton University and in Law from Tulane Law School.
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Idyllia began as a thought experiment. What would happen if idyllic scenarios that people imagine in their minds were turned into realities in the world? How might these personal idylls become dystopian when their lack of social engagement becomes apparent?
Over the course of the writing, various stories went off in different directions, departing wildly from the author’s initial ideas and control, popping up unexpectedly in exhibitions of contemporary art, coming into being and existing only in digital form...
Eventually the author realised he had come to write a sort of sci-fi without really having had the intention, and along the way unearthed the previously unknown genre of Idyllic Factualism.
The stories in Idyllia ask difficult questions about human imagination and will, the nature of the near future, and suggest beginnings of answers that are unexpected and surprising.
Christopher Sand-Iversen grew up in Wales. He is an art historian, translator and writer. He studied Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art and runs SixtyEight, an independent organisation for art in Copenhagen. Idyllia is his first work of fiction.
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free entry, limited seats, RSVP below