Poetry at Pembroke: Elsa Hammond

'Poetry at Pembroke', a series of poetry readings taking place throughout Hilary term. 

The series has been organised by Peter King, Lecturer in Philosophy at Pembroke. Performances take place every Monday evening at 6pm between 15th January - 5th March. Check our events page for further listings. To find out more please contact Peter King. 

Elsa Hammond is an award-winning travel writer (co-author, The Wild Guide to Southern and Eastern England, UK Travel Media Awards Travel Guide of the Year 2015), whose poetry focuses particularly on solitude in the natural world. In 2014 she undertook a 1,000 mile solo rowing expedition on the Pacific Ocean, and is now completing a collection exploring the experience of spending almost two months alone on the open ocean.

Elsa teaches English at a number of colleges at Oxford, and is completing her PhD on ‘breath’ in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Alfred Tennyson at the University of Bristol. The rest of the time she can be found swimming in rivers around Oxford, hiking up mountains in training for her mountain leader qualification, or dangling upside-down doing aerial silks. 

Past engagements include: BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, TEDx Bath, the Stanford Travel Writers Festival, the Hay Literary Festival, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution.