2 December 2023, Northeastern University London, all day
Richard Aldington, Exile and Other Poems
Richard Aldington’s Exile and Other Poems was published on 29 November 1923. This one-day conference celebrates its centenary, along with the publication of a new edition by the Renard Press, edited and annotated by Aldington scholars Elizabeth Vandiver and Vivien Whelpton.
The venue is Northeastern University London, Devon House, 58 St Katharine's Way, London E1W 1LP. It is fully accessible.
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Exile and Other PoemsRichard Aldington
First published in 1923, Exile and Other Poems is an important, poignant collection from one of the foremost Imagist war poets. Penned after witnessing the horrors of the frontline during the First World War, Aldington’s brutal, honest verse lays bare unimaginable experiences.
The first part of the collection, ‘Exile’, explores the poet’s survivor’s guilt, post-traumatic stress and sense of alienation. The collection continues with a ‘Songs for Puritans’ and ‘Songs for Sensualists’, pastiches of seventeenth and eighteenth-century love poetry, and a series of more personal poems exploring the natural world, from which Aldington drew reassurance.
Enriched with a fascinating introduction and explanatory notes by leading Aldington scholars Elizabeth Vandiver and Vivien Whelpton, this centenary edition seeks to place Exile firmly back on the map of war poetry, from which it has been missing for too long.