5.00-6.00pm, Friday 6 October, 2023, 50 George Square, Lecture Theatre G.03. Followed by Reception from 7.00pm (sponsored by NYRB) – A James Tait Black Prize Visiting Writer Event

A conversation with Amit Chaudhuri, winner of the 2022 James Tait Black Prize in Biography for Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (NYRB/Faber), celebrating the launch of his latest publication, Sweet Shop: New and Selected Poems (NYRB). Named ‘the best living writer of the English sentence’ by Aditya Chakrabortty, Amit Chaudhuri’s work – as poet, novelist, essayist, memoirist, critic, editor, and musician – is characterised by both a liberating, formally exploratory scope and a deep integrity of vision and voice. In tonight’s interview, Chaudhuri will read from his poems, introduce some of the photographs from the ‘bizarre art project’ that inspired the Sweet Shop section, and discuss the place of poetry in his creative life. The poems will also offer a point of entry into his wider oeuvre and interventions in literature and culture, opening conversation on marginalised forms of writing, the ‘creative’ and the ‘critical’, the relations between between creative freedom and the pressures of professionalisation and the market – and on the ways in which, as one of the poems collected here has it, ‘So much of the world / is what we imagine’.

The event is open to the public, free but ticketed – to attend in person, please book your place on eventbrite. All are welcome to attend the NYRB-sponsored reception that follows.

This event, as well as an associated masterclass, and a concert, are part of the James Tait Black Visiting Writers Series. The concert is also open to the public, free but ticketed.

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