Professor Peter Read from SECL will be giving a guest lecture to staff and students at the University of Turin on 5th April 2017. He will be speaking on the manuscripts of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), exploring how the poet constantly reshuffled and plundered his ever-expanding archive to create new works, using scissors and paste as well as pen and ink. The lecture will show how Apollinaire complemented and amplified his resolutely modernist literary style by writing his poems, stories and other texts on a very diverse range of recycled materials, including headed notepaper from banks, cafes and newspapers, the back of international news-agency bulletins, used wrapping paper, notepads, exercise books and diaries printed in English, French and Russian.

Peter has also been invited to give a public lecture at the 7th Festival International du Livre d’Art et du Film next November in Narbonne. Peter’s lecture will be at the Médiathèque du Grand Narbonne on 30 November 2017 and will be focus on his recently published book “Apollinaire: Lettres, calligrammes, manuscrits” (Paris, Textuel / Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2016).