POET Greta Stoddart introduces her new collection of poetry, Fool, with an evening of readings and conversation on Thursday 29th September at 7pm. Greta will be in conversation with Gill Barr, who has read her own poems at Sladers Yard on several occasions.

Fool, Greta’s fourth collection, is published by Bloodaxe Books and will be available to buy at the launch.

When knowledge is ours at the tap of a key, what is it we’re accumulating and is it at the expense of another, more intuitive kind of knowing?

The word ‘fool’ derives from the Latin follis, one of whose meanings is ‘empty-headed person’. Such mindlessness is not quite imaginable, but perhaps it is possible that by unknowing a thing we can start to see it differently. There’s a lot the fool doesn’t know – otherwise they wouldn’t be a fool – but can anyone be trusted to know anything?

A low-level hum of discordance runs through these poems: between inner and outer worlds, between the sceptical and the wondering mind. Ideas of belief and truth play out in various ways, often through lone figures, fools maybe, thinking aloud, continually distracted by the necessary performance of being.

Greta Stoddart, who lives with her family near Lyme Regis, was born in 1966 in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. She spent her childhood in Oxford and Belgium. She studied acting in Paris and worked as a performer before becoming a full-time poet. Having taught at Goldsmiths, University of London and Bath Spa University, she now teaches for Poetry School UK.