2024 Hay Festival
Event 335. Simon Armitage and Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Hansel & Gretel: The Laureate and the Illuminator
Saturday 1 June 2024, 8.30pm – Wye Stage.
Tickets are £15.00 and are available from the Festival website.
Simon Armitage’s reinvention of a fairy tale, Hansel & Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes, was published by Faber & Faber in 2023. It’s the third book by the Poet Laureate to be illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, following Sir Gawain & the Green Knight in 2018 and The Owl and the Nightingale in 2021.
The Poet Laureate and the artist/illustrator hold a conversation with pictures, talking about their experiences of working together and reading favourite passages from the three books. Hicks-Jenkins directed and designed the music theatre production with actors and puppets of Armitage’s Hansel & Gretel when it premiered in 2018, and two members of the original cast make a special appearance.
Original illustrations from the books can be seen in Clive’s exhibition at local art gallery The Table, Hay-on-Wye, from Thursday 23 May to Saturday 22 June.