I Tiresias………

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—

T S Eliot described Tiresias as ‘the most important personage’ in The Waste Land.  The two sexes, he wrote, meet in Tiresias.  Gender fluidity is explored and celebrated in C+nto and Othered Poems, the new collection by the most recent winner of the T S Eliot Prize, Joelle Taylor.  As part of the festival, Joelle will read from the collection and discuss aspects of her life and work, exploring for example her passionate reconjuring of 1980s-90s butch lesbian counterculture in London, the female body and its politicisation, the challenges facing the LGBTQ+ community and the rise in hate crimes against that community.  St. Olave’s Lady Chapel Window depicts four modern types of Christian womanhood: Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler and Edith Cavell.