As part of an Autumn series, called The Four Voices of Freedom, Dinah Livingstone and others celebrate the American radical, Paul Goodman at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute. The American anarchist, Paul Goodman whose centenary takes place this month, was an independent spirit. His book Growing Up Absurd became a guidebook for the restless generation of the late sixties. He shook the complacency of the Fifties with his emphasis on peaceful change and the just rights of small communities. He was the first to argue that the future of the natural world, the relief of the starving and the establishment of peace were more important principles than economic growth. He once wrote;
“Civilization is a continual gift of spirit: inventions, discoveries, insight, art. We are citizens, as Socrates would have said, and we have it available as our own.”
 
The radical political voice of Dinah Livingstone is a natural choice to lead the centenary celebration. She spent her childhood years in the West of England and has lived in Camden Town, London, since 1966, where she has run the small press Katabasis since 1967. She has three children and two grandsons. She has received three Arts Council Writer’s Awards for her poetry. She edits the magazine Sofia.
Her most recent poetry collections are Presence (2003,) Kindness (2007), andTime on Earth: Selected and New Poems, published by Rockingham Press in 1999. She has published nine pamphlets and seven books of poetry. She is a very experienced reader and has given many readings in all kinds of venues at home and abroad.
She is a translator (from Spanish, French, German and Italian) with a special interest in Latin American poetry and prose. A writer said of her She is critical of global capitalism, the cultural dominance of the USA and the way urban living cuts us off from the rhythms of Nature.
Her most recent prose book, Poetic Tales(2010), is an essay in four chapters, which offers a way into poetry even for the prosaic or merely puzzled, and a way into theology for atheists and all. This follows her previous book-length essay The Poetry of Earth (2000).Dinah ran the well-known Camden Voices Poetry Group from 1978 to 1998, to whom her Poetry Handbook for Readers and Writers (Macmillan 1992) is dedicated.
Tom Philips is a young, radical poet who lives and works in Bristol. he has been published in City, Short Fuse, 100 poets against the war, In the Criminal’s Cabinet and Babylon Burning. His poetry has been broadcast on the BBC and has also featured on line, in Eyewear, Nth Position and Various Artists. He is part of Big Mouth Cabaret. He has published short stories in Critical Quarterly. Tom has also written a number of plays, such as Closer to You, Closing Ranks Concorde Stories Falkland Letters, Gridlock and Jubilation. He formerly edited Venue magazine. Currently in print are Burning Omaha (2002) and Reversing into the Cold (both Firewater,) 2007)
Both will read their verse on September 14th at 7.30 at the Bath Scientific and Literary Institute, chaired by Duncan McGibbon who will also read poetry by Paul Goodman.