As I told you earlier, I was at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in October 2014 for the very original and lovely event “Damian Lewis & Helen McCrory: Great Love Poems” followed by a book signing by Allie Esiri, the wonderful woman behind the Love Book, the Love Book app as well as the event, Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory.
This is what Allie Esiri has said about the event:
“Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory took the roof off the 1400 seater The Times Forum The Times/Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. They were hilarious and sexy and ridiculously talented, they totally stormed it… Damian and Helen read a story from the beginning to the end of a love affair, through poetry selected from The Love Book anthology. They were funny, flirty, made the audience roar with laughter and cry. It was very exciting for poetry.”
I cannot agree more!
Allie Esiri was also extremely kind to share with me the complete set of poems Lewis and McCrory read at the event. I am so grateful for her time, her generosity and looking forward to her future projects!
So, fans… HERE IS a “you can do it at home” project! You can get a copy of the Love Book and read the poems in the particular order as below and live or re-live (if you were in Times Forum with us that afternoon) that beautiful love story… Or you can download the Love Book App on iTunes and listen to some of the poems from the event and many more from different actors and actresses, including Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory, but also Gina Bellman, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hiddleston, and Emma Watson… and you may discover some new poetry on the way… Or… you can make an event out of this, you can do your own reading with your better half, with your friends, using the Damian & Helen list, or making your own selections!
Wouldn’t it be so much FUN?
Now it’s time for me to shut up and give you the beautiful world of poetry with Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory.
Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory
Great Love Poems from the Love Book
HM: Extract Act 3 Scene 2 from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
DL: Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley
HM: Mother, I cannot mind my Wheel by Sappho
DL: To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
HM: Coupling by Fleur Adcock
DL: may I feel said he by E. E. Cummings
HM: Now sleeps the crimson petal by Lord Tennyson
DL: Good God What a Night That Was by Petronius
HM: Life Story by Tennessee Williams
DL: Celia by Adrian Mitchell
HM: Conviction (iv) by Stevie Smith
DL: A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
HM: One Perfect Rose by Dorothy Parker
DL: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B Yeats
HM: It is here by Harold Pinter
DL: Valentine by John Fuller
HM: Come. And Be My Baby by Maya Angelou
DL: Scaffolding by Seamus Heaney
HM: Words, Wide Night by Carol Ann Duffy
DL: i carry your heart with me (i carry it in by E.E. Cummings
HM: Sonnet 43 (How do I love thee?) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
DL: Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare
HM: Let me put it this way by Simon Armitage
DL: Bright Star by John Keats
HM: Close close by Elizabeth Bishop
DL: Talking in Bed by Philip Larkin
HM: Mrs Icarus by Carol Ann Duffy
DL: Animals by Frank O’Hara
HM: In the Night by Stevie Smith
DL: One Cigarette by Edwin Morgan
HM: Ebb by Edna St Vincent Millay
DL: We’ll go no more a roving by Lord Byron
HM: When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats
DL: Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin
HM: Sonnet 55 by William Shakespeare
When she finished reading Sonnet 55, there were tears in McCrory’s eyes. And, I know she was not the only one in the room.
Many of these poems attributed to DL were actually read by Tom Hiddleston on my app. Hiddleston has great (very sensuous) voice, no doubt.
On the app, Damian did great with the comic poems, in particular, “On taking a wife” by Thomas Moore. 🙂
Yes, Hiddleston reads most of them on the app — but Damian Lewis read them all on stage at Cheltenham Literature Festival, and just hearing “may i feel said he” from Damian was well worth the trip 🙂