A LECTURE about a controversial writer who embraced Fascism will be delivered in South Tyneside.

Poet Ezra Pound was sympathetic to the Mussolini government and made broadcasts on its behalf during World War Two to his native America.

Pound’s writings also contained anti-Semitic elements and he was eventually captured by partisans after the fall of Mussolini and imprisoned in Pisa, Italy, where he wrote some of his most famous poetry, known as The Pisan Cantos.
He was later committed to a US hospital for many years.

A lecture called Poetry and Prejudice: Justifying One’s Valuation of Pound, will be given at Bede’s World, in Church Bank, Jarrow, at 5.30pm on Thursday. Sept. 8

Lecturer Jack Baker, from the Department of English Studies, Durham University, said: “My lecture will consider The Pisan Cantos in relation to this enduring problem: can the aesthetic value of a work of art be reconciled with its repellent sentiments?”

Admission to the lecture is free.

Call Bede’s World on 489 2106 for more details or visit the museum website at www.bedesworld.co.uk