With wit and style, the author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia and Song & Dance Man III: The Art Of Bob Dylan –  definitive studies of Dylan’s body of work  –  uses great records and rare footage to examine the Minnesota Bard’s interaction with literature; Michael will show too how hugely Dylan has been inspired in particular by the blues and how much of its remarkable, under-attended poetry has been smuggled inside his own highly influential writing.

His books may be immense but there’s nothing dry about Michael’s talks, and he has been much in demand on North American college campuses and in the UK & Ireland at arts theatres, arts centres and festivals.

He has appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio and at the University of Texas at Austin, where he drew the largest crowd of any external speaker in two years. In 2011 he was keynote speaker at Dylan Conferences at the universities of Vienna and Bristol; in 2013 he spoke at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, the University of Munich, several universities in the US and at the York Festival of Ideas in the UK. In 2015 he addressed Goldsmiths College London and the University of Oslo.

Michael Gray’s events are always lively & spontaneous, witty and acute, using unpredictable slices of loud music to offer a thoroughly entertaining, fresh account of Dylan’s achievement.

Free entrance.