Wallace Stevens once described poetry as an elixir incorporating thought and feeling. But does it still have a place in the twenty-first century – an era devoted to click-bait and self-obsession?

Join Victoria University of Wellington’s Professor Heidi Thomson (School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies) as she dares you to read Romantic poetry for its pure power. With special reference to the work of William Wordsworth and John Keats, Professor Thomson will argue Romanticism continues to be an elixir for a more compassionate, beautiful life.

For more information contact: Leah Johanson at RSVP@vuw.ac.nz or 04 463 6770

_{Sam CAIRNCROSS (b.1913, d.1976), Daffodils, 1946, oil on canvas, 655 x 817mm, Victoria University of Wellington Staff Club Collection, purchased 1947}