Charles Baudelaire was the original flâneur poet, embodying the spirit of the curious wanderer. One hundred and fifty years after his death, join Poet in the City and the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation as we traverse the psychogeography of the city and explore the extraordinary impact of this writer through discussion and poetry.

We will be joined by modern day Flâneuse Lauren Elkin, Professors Helen Abbott and Matthew Beaumont, and performance artist Dylan Read to tell the story of the father of flâneurie and celebrate his resounding legacy.

Mingle with us amongst the crowd on the boulevard…

Lauren Elkin is the author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, a cultural history of women writers and artists who have found personal freedom as well as inspiration by engaging with cities on foot. As well as appearing as Radio 4’s Book of the Week, Flâneuse has also been published internationally, with its recent launch in the US in February 2017, where it was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Lauren is also an award-winning translator and novelist.

As Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, Helen Abbott specialises in nineteenth-century French poetry and music. Her research explores ways of writing about word-music relationships in poetic language, in critical theories, and using digital methodologies. Her particular focus is the work of (post-) romantic and symbolist poets including Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and Mallarmé. She is leading the Baudelaire Song Project.

Dylan Read was born in Paris and grew-up in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. At university, Dylan performed and co-directed an extensive repertoire of theatre and performance projects. As a keen musician, he also scored a critically acclaimed version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.  Most recently, he has been working on a piece of performance art to be presented in a Berlin gallery in March, and helping to create a sequel to the Fringe sell-out show Dinner is Swerved, of which he was co-creator. Alongside working with Théâtre Senza, he is devising a large-scale theatre performance exploring the visionary urban themes of Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris with GoodDog theatre company.

Matthew Beaumont is co-director of the UCL Urban Laboratory and Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the UCL Department of English. Matthew is the author of Utopia Ltd. (Haymarket, 2009), The Spectre of Utopia (Peter Lang, 2012) and Nightwalking (Verso, 2015). As well as being an academic and author, Matthew has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed, ‘The Falneur – Walking in the City’ and regularly contributes to the Guardian.