Dead Poets Live
Frost and Thomas
London
They met in 1913, an encounter pivotal in the life and work of both men. Championed by Thomas, Frost gained literary recognition, with poems such as ‘Home Burial’, ‘Mending Wall’ and ‘The Road Not Taken’, and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times. Without Frost, Thomas may never have taken to verse, the medium in which he finally found artistic fulfillment, and with it unexpected happiness, cut short on the Western Front, where Thomas was killed in action on Easter Monday 1917.
Performers
Kyle Soller was winner of the Milton Shulman Award for Outstanding Newcomer at the 2011 Evening Standard Awards, given for work at the Young Vic and the Royal Court, and has gone on to play, among other roles, George Tesman in Ivo van Hove’s Hedda Gabler, Gaveston in Edward II and Edmund in Anthony Page’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, for which he was nominated for an Olivier in 2013. Until recently he starred as Francis in the TV Series Poldark.
Shaun Dooley returns to the part of Robert Frost, having played him already in Richard Eyre’s The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, staged at the Almeida in 2012, since when he has made memorable appearances in The White Queen, Broadchurch and Gunpowder, among other stage and screen projects.
Proceeds from the evening went to the refugee charity Safe Passage.
‘Safe Passage works to ensure every person fleeing persecution can access a safe and legal route to a place where they can live a full and dignified life. We’re extremely grateful for the support of Dead Poets Live, every inch of which will go to supporting the most vulnerable unaccompanied minors to reach safety.’
Photos of the event
Poems read
Robert Frost
by permission of Henry Holt and the Estate of Robert Frost.
All rights reserved.
‘Rose Pogonias’
‘Mowing’
‘Mending Wall’
‘Home Burial’
‘The Road Not Taken’
‘Out, Out –’
‘Iris by Night’
Edward Thomas
‘Adlestrop’
‘The Owl’
‘Rain’
‘As the team’s head-brass’
‘The sun used to shine’
Prose from The Heart of England
Reading list
The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (2002)
Edward Thomas, poems selected by Matthew Hollis (2016)
Elected Friends: Edward Thomas and Robert Frost to One Another, ed.
Spencer (2004)
Matthew Hollis, Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas (2012)
Banner images and photographs of the event © Tara Rowse
