Poetry Reading: In Memory of Lucian Freud

Reflection
by Lucian Freud, 1947
Private Collection; Image: Lucian Freud Archive © Lucian Freud

Annie Freud has curated an evening of her father’s favourite poems. She will be joined by a stellar cast of poets; Wendy Cope, John Hegley, Don Paterson, Matthew Caley, Rachel Boast, John Stammers and Lorraine Mariner.

Reading and speaking poems aloud was a very important part of Lucian Freud’s life, his work and his relationships.  Annie remembers: “when I was a child, he often used to invent little rhymes to distract me from the boredom of sitting for a picture. I remember the shared sympathy we felt for the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo’s lonely life on the desolate coast of Coromandel, and our sense of dread should Carroll’s Snark turn out to be a Boojum.

In later years, I remember his tremendous excitement when the three-volume paperback edition of Bertolt Brecht’s poems was published. Every time we met, he would read a newly-discovered poem to me.  And then at other times and in quite another mood, he’d entertain me with Rochester’s fabulous obscenities, particularly ‘Under Nellie’s Picture’, a wonderful four-line shocker dedicated to Nell Gwyn.

For Lucian Freud, reading poems aloud were often part of having a conversation. Poems mattered to him because they actually said something of importance. I think there were times when reciting a much-loved poem was a way of saying something that couldn’t be said in any other way. My sister Rose tells me that during his last months there were days when he recited Shakespeare’s 130th Sonnet over and over again on a continuous loop.”

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