'John Keats and the Pythagorean/Petrarchan Sonnet'

A talk by poet Lee Slonimsky at the Keats-Shelley House on Thursday 16 May at 5 p.m.   

Entrance included in the museum standard entrance ticket/ Advance booking recommended (06 678 42 35 - [email protected])

Space is limited so people who have not booked will be welcome on a first come first served basis.   

Lee Slonimsky, an American poet and hedge fund manager, has been exploring the influence of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras for the past twenty years. His sonnet sequence PYTHAGORAS IN LOVE (2007) was selected for both the US poetry website Poetry Daily, and for a feature story by Bloomberg News, and he has gone on to publish a total of eight books, many featuring poems about Pythagoras. In 2016 he lectured on Pythagoras’s influence on poetry at the Athens Academy, paired with a lecture by the American poet and friend of philosophy living in Greece Ginger F. Zaimis. New and exciting research since has directly tied Pythagoras to Petrarch in the form of a rediscovered essay by the latter. Petrarch, quite possibly Shakespeare’s favourite poet, leads directly to the brilliant sonnet writing and critical achievements of John Keats. 

PYTHAGORAS IN LOVE has been translated into French by the esteemed American poet Elizabeth J. Coleman (2015), and is currently being translated into modern Greek by the distinguished Greek poet Stamatis Polenakis.