Through the Weather Glass – Poetry Performance

Abstract

What if we can’t solve climate change? What if, instead of staring at our reflections in the weather glass, we travelled through everything we know about climate change and participated in the world beyond? Lucy Burnett’s hybrid novel Through the Weather Glass tells a fantastic, playful account of the author’s struggles to understand environmental change through the persona of Icarus during a 2500 mile cycle from Salford to the Greek island where Icarus fell. On the back of an extended Arts Council funded tour in 2016, this performance and installation version of the novel combines live poetry, film, installation and music, inviting the audience to join Icarus on a genre-twisting and gender-bending road trip up mountains, across plains and along the coast of our wonderfully changing world.

Biography

Lucy Burnett is a writer, artist and performer, and works as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. Leaf Graffiti, her first poetry collection, was published by Carcanet / Northern House in 2013. Her second book, a hybrid novel called Through the Weather Glass, was published by Knives Forks & Spoons in 2013. In 2016, an interactive installation version of Through the Weather Glass toured the UK with the support of the Arts Council. Lucy is currently completing her manuscript for a second poetry collection with Carcanet Press, and developing a collaborative poetry / physical theatre sequence with OBRA, an international physical theatre company based in France. Lucy’s work frequently explores environmental questions and themes, including climate change: prior to returning to academia she worked as an environmental campaigner for organisations such as Friends of the Earth.

This is a public event, organised as part of the programme for the conference Mediating Climate Change (4-6 July, University of Leeds).

The event is free and all are welcome, but places are limited so booking is essential.  Book tickets here