Philip Terry, Dante’s Purgatorio

A sequel to Dante’s Inferno, which set Dante at the University of Essex, Dante’s Purgatorio relocates to Mersea Island, where a mountain is constructed out of Flexible Rock Substitute (FRS).

‘This new reworking of Dante’s masterpiece is remarkable: for boldness, resourceful inventiveness, and…for its emotional and moral heft.’ – Ralph Pite

Saturday 21st June, 1.00pm
Venue: St Leonard-at-the-Hythe Church, Hythe Hill, Colchester, CO1 2NP
Tickets: £12 per event / £10 concessions (Students, Under 27s and Unwaged).
All 3 events for £30 / £26 concessions
Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

Part of Spirits, Salons & Sanctuary

An afternoon exploring Spirits, Salons and Sanctuary in the church of St Leonards through new books by poet and translator Philip Terry, poet and novelist Clare Pollard and cultural historian, mythographer and writer Marina Warner. These events are kindly supported by The Bean Trust.

Ticket Deal

Make a day of it! Tickets £12 per event or all 3 events for £30 (Concessions £10 per event or all 3 events for £26).
Discount automatically applied at checkout when tickets for all 3 events are booked:

1.00pm – Philip Terry, Dante’s Purgatorio
2.30pm – Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies
4.30pm – Marina Warner, Sanctuary

Dante’s Purgatorio by Philip Terry

A sequel to Philip Terry’s Dante’s Inferno (2014), where Dante relocates to the University of Essex, here the action shifts from Dante’s Island of Purgatory to Mersea Island, in Essex still, where the poet and his guide Ted Berrigan climb a mountain made out of Flexible Rock Substitute (FRS).

Dante’s artists are replaced with contemporary artists and artists-in-residence on the Essex Alp, including Grayson Perry, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst. Hirst, an example of pride, is encountered not carrying a rock on his back, as in Dante, but carrying a washing-machine, a Siemens Avantgarde, which runs through its spin cycle as he carries it.

Other characters encountered include Christopher Marlowe, Boris Johnson, Lady Diana, Jean Paul Getty, Hilary Clinton, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Martin McGuinness, Ciaran Carson and Anoushka Shankar. On the final terrace, the poet, accompanied by Berrigan and poet Tim Atkins, passes through a wall of flames to reach Dante’s Paradise, here modelled on the Eden Project, where the poet meets his Beatrice, Marina Warner.

The poem comes to a climax with an interview with Marina Warner in the LRB Tent, followed by a gig from the Pogues, for which Shane MacGowan has been brought up from Hell on an Arts Council ‘Exceptional Talent’ scheme.

Order a copy of Dante’s Purgatoio by Philip Terry from the Essex Book Festival online bookshop at bookshop.org

Philip Terry

Philip Terry was born in Belfast, and is a poet, translator, and a writer of fiction. He has translated the work of Georges Perec, Michèle Métail and Raymond Queneau, and is the author of the novel tapestry, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. His poetry and experimental translations include Oulipoems, Dante’s Inferno, and Dictator, a version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Globish. The Penguin Book of Oulipo, which he edited, was published in Penguin Modern Classics in 2020, and Carcanet published his edition of Jean-Luc Champerret’s The Lascaux Notebooks, the first ever anthology of Ice Age poetry, in April 2022.

Philip Terry will be in conversation with Marina Warner

Photo of Marina Warner credit Dan Welldon

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales. marinawarner.com