The British Library celebrates Rabindranath Tagore

The British Library celebrates Rabindranath Tagore, with two performances of his greatest stage play The Post Office, and a night of poetry in English and Bengali, set to subtle jazz improvisation by Zoe and Idris Rahman.

The Post Office By Rabindranath Tagore

Friday 13 May 18.30 – 20.30 and repeated on Saturday 14 May 14.30- 16.30
The British Library Conference Centre

Marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Indian writer and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Written in 1912, The Post Office, rich in symbolism and allegory, is a play about man's passionate cry for spiritual freedom. Anita Desai called it 'as modest as a dew drop, as profound as the ocean.' Gandhi was spellbound by the play in Calcutta in 1917. Mixing simplicity with sophistication, its universal appeal has made it a world classic. Translated, and with a pre-performance talk by William Radice. Directed and produced by The Live Literature Company. www.liveliteraturecompany.co.uk

Tickets priced £7.50 (£5 Concessions) available at http://boxoffice.bl.uk/, by calling 01937 546546 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri) or in person at The British Library.


Flying Man (Pakshi-Manab): Poems for the 21st century by Rabindranath Tagore

Tuesday 17 May 18.30 – 20.00
The British Library Conference Centre

Translated and read in English by William Radice. The original Bengali read by Mukul Ahmed. With jazz improvisations by Zoe Rahman (piano) Idris Rahman (saxophone)

An opportunity to appreciate the poetry of the great Rabindranath Tagore, some of the most haunting and passionate in Indian and world literature. His ceaselessly inventive and remarkably modern verse may reflect on love and human yearning, on a universe both eternal and transient, or the simple joy of watching a grandchild play.

New translations over the last three decades have revealed this modernity. Our choice of poems for this programme will draw on William Radice's Selected Poems of Tagore (1985), his translation of Tagore's collected brief poems (2000) and his new translation for Penguin India of Tagore's most famous book, Gitanjali. Jazz improvisations by Zoe Rahman (piano) and Idris Rahman (saxophone) will connect the Tagore of 1912 with the Tagore of 2011 and the years to come.

Tickets priced £7.50 (£5 Concessions) available at http://boxoffice.bl.uk, by calling 01937 546546 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri) or in person at The British Library.