Vale Royal: Poetry Reading
Saturday 20 May 6:00pm
St Mary Redcliffe Undercroft
Celebrated poet Aidan Andrew Dun reads selections from his epic poem, Vale Royal, featuring Bristol's C18th literary prodigy Thomas Chatterton.
Aidan spent a fantastical childhood and adolescence in the West Indies and knew his calling for poetry from an early age.
Returning to London as a teenager to live with his inspirational grandmother, dancer Marie Rambert, he attended Highgate School but left without A-levels after taking (perhaps too seriously) the role of the rebel-chieftan Aufidius in Coriolanus.
After several years travelling the world with a guitar Aidan was drawn back to London to explore the psychogeography of Kings Cross, magnet to other visionaries before him. Vale Royal (published by Goldmark, 1995) written and recited in the form of a quest, dreams of transforming an urban wasteland into a transcultural zone of canals at the heart of London.
Vale Royal was launched to critical acclaim at the Royal Albert Hall and earned AAD the title Voice of Kings Cross. In following years AAD has recited at the Royal Festival Hall, the Ledbury, Cheltenham, and Swindon literary festivals.
Vale Royal features the Bristol-born literary prodigy Thomas Chatterton, who was inspired by the gothic grandeur of St Mary Redcliffe to write a body of faux medieval verse that he claimed was written by a C15th monk named Rowley.
During this special literary evening, part of a series of events and activities held at the church to commemorate the bicentenary of Chatterton's early death in 1770 , Aidan will be reading the Chatterton sections from Cycle Two of Vale Royal.
An enduring mystical epic has been added to our literature.
Michael Moorcock
He has an extraordinary sense of the past. He's one of those people, along with Blake and Chatterton, who are like a divining rod for history. Peter Ackroyd
