On Voice and the Feeling of Truth

15:30
- 16:30 pm
Sun 9th March 2025
Join novelist, poet and playwright, Owen Sheers, as he concludes our weekend with readings and conversation around his attempts to move beyond a partial truth through engaging with ideas of hybridity, lyricism and voice.

In this concluding session, Professor Owen Sheers will read from three of his recent works, the verse-drama Pink Mist and the BBC film-poems The Green Hollow and To Provide All People. His reading will be interspersed with conversation about the creative processes involved in creating these works, all three of which engage with ideas of hybridity, lyricism and voice to try and move beyond a partial ‘knowing’ of the truth towards a fuller ‘feeling’ of it. Blending documentary and poetic devices, Owen uses the voices of characters informed by multiple interviews to create communal works that address such subjects as the aftermath of conflict, the Aberfan disaster, and the NHS. The nature of such subjects is that the truth of individual experience at their core is often anonymised in more general public narratives. Through shaping his writing around composite characters, many voices and alternating perspectives Owen is able to write in counterflow to this anonymisation, engaging rhythm, rhyme and imagery to create a strangely intimate lyrical distance through which the gap between a reader and the experiences they are reading is, paradoxically, narrowed to great emotional effect.

‘A tremendous book. It feels huge, engulfing, devastating.’ – The Observer on Pink Mist

‘Epic, heart-stopping. A psalm to humanity, to life and death, survival and tragedy, care and peril.’ – The Guardian on To Provide All People

‘A masterpiece.’ – The Arts Desk on The Green Hollow

 

Suitable for: 12 years and up
Owen Sheers

Malvern St James Girls’ School

15 Avenue Road
Great Malvern
Worcestershire
WR14 3BA

Want to attend this session?

You can book a ticket to this session, but might be able to save if you get a day ticket or weekend ticket to the festival, which may include this session.