Summer School 2012
The 8th Tower Poetry Summer School for young poets aged 18-23 will be held in Christ Church, Oxford from 28-31 August 2012. The tutors will be Alan Gillis (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and Kevin Young (Emory University, Atlanta, USA).
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Tower Poetry,
Christ Church,
Oxford, OX1 1DP
Tel: 01865 286591
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| Christopher Tower |
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Christopher Thomas Tower (1915-1998), came from a diplomatic family and was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford (reading history from 1934-1937). At Eton he won numerous school prizes for poetry, English literature and allied subjects, and was a founder and first secretary of the Eton College Archaeological Society. These interests first took him to the Middle East where he studied Arabic and Persian. After holding a number of appointments in that area he retired from official life in order to be able to devote more time to his writing. A collection of the Tower family portraits is on view at the Ashridge Business School. He wrote nine illustrated books of poetry, mainly of Persian and Arab legends - a first volume of verse in 1975 (Firuz of Isfahan published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson as were his subsequent titles); A Distant Fluting (1977); Oultre Jourdain (1980); Victoria the Good (1982); Arcesilayus at Tocra (1992). He left a legacy of £5m to be used, by Christ Church, to endow two teaching posts: a Poetry Studentship and a tutorial fellowship, with an associated University Lecturership plus a Junior Research Fellowship in Greek mythology. The benefaction also funded the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize, an annual competition open to sixth-formers. The oration, delivered in 2005, is reproduced here. |
About Tower Poetry
Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.