The Melancholy Humour Of C P Cavafy, a Lecture by Gregory Woods

The Nottingham Poetry Society David Holliday Annual Lecture 2025

The Melancholy Humour of Constantine Cavafy by Gregory Woods

“Cavafy stands at the boundary where poetry strips herself in order to become prose. He is the most anti-poetic (or a-poetic) poet I know” (George Seferis)

Cavafy was a poet of restrained manner and tightly controlled tone, a counter-Kafka who made a virtue of bureaucratic fussiness. Yet much of his work is about histories of histories, versions of versions, copies of copies, rumours of rumours, none of them definitive. The lecture will explore the exhibitionistic inhibitions of this most oddly enchanting modern voice.

CP Cavafy (1863-1933) was born in Alexandria, Egypt – see www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/c-p-cavafy

Gregory Woods is the author of six poetry collections from Carcanet Press, the latest being Records of an Incitement to Silence (2021). His booklet, They Exchange Glances: Gay Modernist Poems in Translation (2024), is with Hercules Editions. His main books on gay cultural history are with Yale University Press.