Winner of both the 2023 T. S. Eliot and Forward Prizes for his second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, poet and scholar Jason Allen-Paisant presents this year’s specially commissioned lecture. Allen-Paisant considers how poetry, in its formalising of grief and its deployment in funerary rites, can bring us closer to the truth. Don’t miss this powerful exploration of one of poetry’s most fundamental social and political functions.