One of the UK’s most acclaimed contemporary poets, James Fenton, will come to Bristol this Tuesday to publicly inaugurate Bristol University’s £650,000 Penguin Archive Project.

Fenton, who is published by Penguin, will be reading from his published works in an event at Watershed on Tuesday 2 December at 7.15pm.

Born in Lincoln in 1949, James Fenton was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.  He has worked as a political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and columnist.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999.  In 2007, he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

The Penguin Archive Project is a four year project which began in May 2008 with a £650,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

It aims to produce an on-line catalogue of the Penguin Archive, a wealth of material relating to the remarkable history of Penguin Books, housed in Bristol University Library’s Special Collections.

More than 2,300 boxes of letters, notes and other papers spanning the history of Penguin Books from its establishment in 1935 (by Bristol-born Allen Lane) to the present day will be catalogued.

The Project will also pioneer research in the Archive, particularly in the areas of Penguin and Modern Poetry, Penguin Specials and their socio-political impact, and Penguin Translations of the Classics.

The James Fenton Poetry Reading takes places on Tuesday 2 December at 7.15pm at Watershed, Bristol, £7.50/£6.00 (conc).  Tickets are available from the Watershed Box Office: 0117 927 5100.