A performance by Jan Noble
with an introduction by Mark Roberts
Byron’s first review compared his work to ‘so much stagnant water.’ The poet hit back with satires and critiques before receiving almost overnight fame with the publication of ‘Childe Harold's Pilgrimage’. However scandal and debt would mean he spent seven years of self-imposed exile in Italy, its rivers, lakes and lagoons providing him with opportunity for reflection, contemplation and leisure. Byron, a famed and fabled swimmer, was never far from the water.
‘Byron 200’ is a mini, verse-drama written and performed by award-winning poet Jan Noble, a work in three acts that describe three occasions in which Byron took to the water. We witness his first, youthful ‘going in’, second, his legendary swimming of the Hellespont and finally his ‘bathing’ after Shelley’s cremation - an event the author contrives as the precursor to the burning of Byron’s memoirs in London and the poet’s own departure for Greece.
This poetic investigation into a divisive figure offers a sympathetic critique of the poet with the benefit of a #MeToo lens. Byron is reimagined as a dandy libertine, a style icon wrestling with his disability, his sexuality, his title and privilege, ultimately finding both freedom and poetry out on the water.
If you are in Florence and would like to attend the lecture in person at the British Institute Library, please register here or send an email to bif@britishinstitute.it
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This lecture is sponsored by David DeWitte