Guest Lecture – Chris McCabe: "Poems from the Edge of Extinction"

Chris McCabe – “Poems from the Edge of Extinction”

Chris McCabe (b. 1977) is not only director of the National Poetry Library, the United Kingdom’s equivalent to Germany’s Lyrikkabinett; the Liverpudlian poet has also founded the Endangered Poetry Project, launched in 2017 to collect contemporary poetry in the world’s small and disappearing languages. As a result, in 2019 Chris McCabe would publish his seminal anthology “Poems from the Edge of Extinction” presenting contemporary poetry from more than 30 languages, e.g., Belarusian, Livonian, Western Armenian and Yiddish; but also Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Shetlandic, Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Manx or Jèrriais – including comments and translations (by renowned poets like Joy Harjo, Valzhyna Mort or Jackie Kay). In his talk, Chris McCabe will mainly outline the idea, development, and scope of “Poems from the Edge of Extinction.”

Chris McCabe’s work crosses artforms and genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and visual art. Most recently, he has published an anthology of love poetry, “No, love is not dead” (2021), and is the co-editor of “The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century” (2015).  His five collections of poetry are “The Hutton Inquiry” (2005), “Zeppelins” (2008), “THE RESTRUCTURE” (2011), “Speculatrix” (2014) and “The Triumph of Cancer” (2018). In 2013, he was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. McCabe’s first novel, “Dedalus,” was published in 2018 and was shortlisted for the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize. His latest novel is “Mud,” (2019) a version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set beneath Hampstead Heath. His non-fiction work includes an ongoing series of books documenting his search to discover a great forgotten poet in one of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries; titles include “In the Catacombs” (2014), “Cenotaph South” (2016) and “The East Edge: Nightwalks with the Dead Poets of Tower Hamlets.” In 2016, he also explored the area around the National Poetry Library, documented in “The Real South Bank.”