Award-winning novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje will read from A Year of Last Things, his latest work of poetry released in March 2024. Sponsored by the Harry Ransom Center.

Looking back on a life of displacement and discovery, love and loss, this is a brave and extraordinary book. At first sight it is a glittering collection of fragments, moments and memories – but small, beautiful pieces of life are precisely what matter most to Ondaatje. They make an emotional history. As he writes in the opening poem: ‘Reading the lines he loves /he slips them into a pocket, /wishes to die with his clothes /full of torn-free stanzas /and the telephone numbers /of his children in far cities.’ Poetry – where language is made to work hardest, and burns with a gem-like flame – is what Ondaatje has returned to, and this is both an intimate personal record and a great artist’s guide to beauty.

Ondaatje will speak in conversation with author Ed Pavlic. Pre-signed books will be available to purchase at the event.

About Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje is one of the world’s foremost writers – his artistry and aesthetic have influenced an entire generation of writers and readers. Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje’s work also encompasses poetry, memoir, and film, and reveals a passion for defying conventional form. His transcendent novel The English Patient, explores the stories of people history fails to reveal by intersecting four diverse lives at the end of World War II. This bestselling novel was later made into an Academy Award-winning film. In 2018 The English Patient was named the best winner of the Booker prize of the last 50 years, by public vote. His latest book is a return to poetry titled A Year of Last Things.