A poetic exploration of lost histories, silenced voices, & contested notions of ‘Britishness’.

Poetry and Performance with Caroline Bergvall, Jennifer Lee Tsai, Ruth Wiggins and Susie Campbell in London's The Poetry Cafe Basement Space (accessible by lift).

This event responds to the opening of the British Library’s ‘The Bayeux Tapestry Exhibition’ on loan from France and celebrated as a momentous return of the Tapestry nearly 1000 years after it was made. The Tapestry tells an influential version of the Battle of Hastings as well as depicting scenes of medieval life, a victors’ account but stitched in England by workshops of mainly women embroiderers. ‘Beyond the Bayeux Tapestry’ explores alternative versions of this narrative as well as listening for lost stories and silenced voices. It attends to unacknowledged wounds carried forward into national narratives about the country’s borders, and issues of ‘Britishness’. Wounds that have been exploited repeatedly by so-called 'nationalists' in their emotive narratives of asylum-seekers (many of whom are victims of wars) as ‘invaders’, of ‘small boats’ menacing 'our shores', and in racist stereotypes of ‘Britishness’. This event also attends to the materiality of the Tapestry, its stitches, tears, repairs, and stains, and the wounds they speak of, exploring the great medieval trope of wasteland as indicative of a sick or wounded nation but turning into the literal dump of textile waste and associated issues of garment-making, fashion, and sustainability.

Guillemot Press poet Susie Campbell will be introducing the event with readings from Wastelands & Tenter (Guillemot, 2025 & 2020) which speak from this wasteland to tell some of these alternative histories in the voices of the women who stitched the Tapestry as they smuggle their counter-narratives into the Tapestry’s borders. Her special guest readers are Caroline Bergvall, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Ruth Wiggins , poets whose work engages with medievalist and modern themes of the marginalisation of women and their work, the silencing of women's voices and their histories, and issues of what it means today to be ‘British’, particularly drawing on different strands of heritage, such as British and Chinese.

Description supplied by the event organiser.