Yesterday marked the launch of the annual London Literature Festival at Southbank Centre. From this month through until September a variety of talks, readings and other events will be celebrating the best of fiction, poetry, plays and music.

Special highlights include a group of forty female poets and performers doing a live reading of Sylvia Plath's posthumously published body of work Ariel, poetic artist Cornelia Parker in conversation with psychoanalyst Darian Leader and a discussion on modern-day abortion politics between authors Kate Manning and G

abriel Weston.

Throughout the course of the festival you can also attends readings by award-winning poets Heather Phillipson and Emily Berry, as well as the shortlisted authors for the Women's Prize for Fiction. No matter what genre or topic strikes your fancy, be sure to check out the full list of events on the Southbank Centre website.

London Literature Festival runs from now until 8 September at Southbank Centre,  Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX.

southbankcentre.co.uk

Tags: Cornelia Parker, Emily Berry, Gabriel Weston, Heather Phillipson, Kate Manning, London Literature Festival, Southbank Centre, Sylvia Plath

Commemorating its tenth anniversary this year, the London Short Film Festival provides its genre with the same compelling spotlight as its lengthy, blockbuster counterparts. Showcasing the best of the UK’s independent film scene in venues all across town, from the ICA to Curzon Soho, the festival has divided the work of the nation’s rising talents into according themes such as Fucked Up Love, Femmes Fantastique and Youth Of Today.

Tags: Claire Huss, Club des Femmes presents... The Art of Conscience: A Pussy Riot Fundraiser, I am Dora, Jemma Desai, Lady Lazarus, London Short Film Festival, Sandra Hebron, Sandra Lahire, Sylvia Plath

Showing works from 1955-1962 this month the Mayor Gallery takes a look at two of the 20th century’s most fascinating female artists. On the surface their works seem to have little to do with one another, bar their temporal origin, but both are clearly marked by a preoccupation with form.

The Bell Jar‘s author Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is lesser known, although none the less celebrated, as an artist. Her 44 pen and ink drawings and Brasilia poem on display, lent to the gallery by Plath’s daughter Frieda Hughes, showcase her observations from her time spent in Europe. Her carefully considered lines betray a tender and inquisitive concern with design.

Meanwhile Italian-born Dadamaino, real name Eduarda Maino (1935-2004), found fame as one of the proponents of the pan-European Zero Group, of which Yves Klein was a member. Albeit less renowned than Plath, her formulaic monochrome works present the viewer with a pleasure in graphic form and line. Cutting large shapes in canvases, the wall upon which each work is hung becomes just as much a part of the artwork as the slither of canvas she leaves untouched.

Until 17th December 2011 at Mayor Gallery, 22A Cork Street, London W1S 3NA

Drawings by Sylvia Plath, copyright Frieda Hughes. All images courtesy of the Mayor Gallery.

Tags: Art, Dadamaino, Eduarda Maino, Frieda Hughes, Mayor Gallery, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Zero Group

But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver
In fifty, gold
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
– Sylvia Plath, The Applicant

By Felicity Shaw

Tags: Felicity Shaw, Sylvia Plath, The Applicant