Tatterdemalion and Tim Laycock - 'Satires of Circumstance'

A Musical Performance of a Treasured Volume of Hardy Poetry for the Thomas Hardy Society Conference and Festival 2021

Friday 16th July at 8.30pm

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Enjoy a musical performance with readings and scenes from Hardy's poetry collection Satires of Circumstance (1914).

Satires of Circumstance includes the 18 poem sequence Poems 1912-13 on the death of Hardy's wife Emma - extended to the now-classic 21 poems in Collected Poems of 1919 - widely regarded to comprise the best work of his poetic career.

The collection's title was picked by the publisher, and disapproved of by Hardy, emphasising as it did the 15 light-hearted satires and sketches of 1910, at the expense of the Poems of 1912-13 themselves, as well as of the 39 Miscellaneous Lyrics and the 34 Lyrics and Reveries, all with their more serious side. These latter include such fine examples of philosophical meditation and contemporary observation as 'Wessex Heights' and 'Channel Firing'.

The collection's initial reception was very muted, only Lytton Strachey pointing out how the writing had “the subtle disturbing force of poetry...the secret of touching our marrow-bones”. The subgroup 'Satires of Circumstance' have been singled out as a significant influence on and template for Siegfried Sassoon, and may also have influenced the early D. H. Lawrence.

Tickets: For those who are not attending the conference in its entirety - £10 (£8 for THS Members)