2025-26 Norton Professor of Poetry: Steve McQueen

Discussants: Tracey Scoffield, Producer; Hazel V. Carby, Yale University

Moderator: Ashley Clark, Criterion Collection

The 2025-26 Norton Lectures | Steve McQueen: Pulse

Norton Lecture Two: Small Axe

Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s anthology series has been celebrated for its powerful storytelling, its authentic portrayal of Black British culture, and its exploration of themes of identity, racism, and resilience. The five films, which depict the experiences of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s, have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards. Small Axe is not a traditional television series, but rather a collection of five standalone films, each telling a unique story rooted in the Black British experience during a period of social and political upheaval. McQueen will be joined by Tracey Scoffield (Small Axe producer), Hazel Carby (Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies, Professor Emeritus of American Studies, Yale University) and Ashley Clark (Curatorial Director, the Criterion Collection) to discuss the anthology.

The films of Small Axe will be screened in September & October ahead of this lecture at the Harvard Film Archive. The full details for the series can be found here.

This is the second of six Norton Lectures with Steve McQueen. For all Lecture dates and information, click here.

Steve McQueen is recognized internationally as one of the most important artists of his generation. His work explores universal themes, often addressing painful and challenging histories and exposing the fragility of the human condition.

Awarded the Turner Prize in 1999, McQueen has had his artwork presented at some of the most significant venues and museums around the world. His work has been featured in Documenta, he represented Great Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and was selected several times for the Venice Biennale’s central pavilion. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago; Schaulager, Basel; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. In 2019 he presented YEAR 3 at Tate Britain and had a major solo exhibition at Tate Modern in 2020 which toured to Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan in 2022. In Spring 2023, he presented Grenfell at the Serpentine South Gallery, London. In 2024 McQueen unveiled a new installation, Bass, co-commissioned by Dia and Schaulager Basel, at Dia Beacon in New York.

McQueen has directed four feature films. His first, Hunger (2008), was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his third, 12 Years a Slave (2013), received the Golden Globe, Oscar, and BAFTA awards for best picture in 2014. In 2020, he made Small Axe, an anthology of five films about London’s West Indian community and, in 2021, Uprising, a 3-part documentary with James Rogan, about the New Cross Fire in London in 1981. His documentary film, Occupied City, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. Blitz, his most recent feature, about the Second World War, had its world premiere as the opening film of the 68th BFI London Film Festival.