Anniversary …

… ‘Briggflatts’ at Fifty — LRB blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Bunting finished Briggflatts – named after a Quaker meeting house in Cumbria – at midnight on 15 May, almost exactly a year after Pickard knocked on his door. He first read the poem in public on 22 December 1965 in a small, crowded chamber of the Morden Tower on Newcastle’s City Wall, which had recently been converted into a poetry venue by Pickard and his wife Connie. It was about to become one of the most storied poetry venues of its era.