9 June 2009

Poetry tour for University writing fellow

Renowned poet Gordon Meade, Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Dundee, will next week embark on a two-week poetry tour of German universities.

He will be accompanied by Desmond Graham, Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, and the pair will promote their most recent collections of poetry across the country.

The tour begins on Monday, June 15th, and will see Gordon and Professor Graham address audiences at the universities of Duisburg/Essen, Bochum, Dortmund, Giessen, Marburg, Karlsruhe and Heidelberg.

Gordon Meade's most recent collection, The Private Zoo, was published last summer while his travelling companion’s new work, The Green Parakeet, will be officially launched at the University of Duisburg/Essen event.

He said, 'It is a great privilege to be invited to read in Germany again and I am honoured to be doing so, for the first time, as the Royal Literary Writing Fellow at the University of Dundee.'

Fife-based Gordon was born in Perthshire in 1957, and studied English at the universities of Dundee and Newcastle upon Tyne. He has been widely published in the UK and abroad, and divides his time between his own writing and running creative writing courses for vulnerable young people and adults in schools, drop-in centres and hospitals.

His work is concerned with the interaction between the animal and human worlds. These interests are extended in The Private Zoo which includes poems set in Venice, Florida, Edinburgh Zoo and the coast of Fife. He cites as early influences the work of Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and W.S.Graham. More recently he has been impressed by a number of American poets including Jim Harrison, Galway Kinnell and Robert Wrigley.

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk