Anne Carson: Red Doc>

In a rare UK performance Canadian poet Anne Carson read from her recent verse novel Red Doc>, a sequel to her 1998 Autobiography of Red. In the earlier book Geryon, a version of the red, winged monster slain by Herakles in his tenth labour, was a moody, gay teenage boy who falls for the suave charmer Herakles, only to be ultimately rejected by him. In Red Doc> he reappears as G, older, wearily aware of time’s flight, and Herakles as a war veteran, haunted by his past.

‘Her ambition is one thing,’ wrote Sarah Crown in the Guardian, ‘the fact that it is so completely achieved is, frankly, something else … The best stories don’t have beginnings or endings, not really, but they do have great tellers. Carson is, simply, one of the very best.’

This event took place with the generous assistance of The Poetry Society.