Saturday 3 July 2021
Online events will be available for ticket holders to access for two weeks after they finish.
One to Ones with Robert Selby
10am – 12noon, Zoom, £20 per half hour session,Tickets here
Develop your writing and receive constructive and detailed feedback through an individual half-hour session with poet Robert Selby.
Robert Selby is a freelance writer and edits King’s College London’s online poetry journal, Wild Court. His recent collection is The Coming-Down Time and he co-edited Mick Imlah: Selected Prose.
In Person! Ley Hunt: Walking Writing Workshop, led by Rhys Trimble and Joe Kerr
2pm – 5pm, Meet at British Camp Car Park (opposite the Malvern Hill Hotel), £5, Tickets here
Track Ley Lines and learn more about sites of archaeological and historical interest. Seek inspiration in the landscape. Take frequent stops to read and write poems. This Walking Writing Workshop led by poet Rhys Trimble and architectural historian Joe Kerr offers a unique way to experience the countryside around Ledbury and to mark the centenary of Alfred Watkins’s vision of ancient tracks that criss-cross the British Isles.
Versopolis with Eleni Cay (Slovakia), Volha Hapeyeva (Belarus), Danae Sioziou (Greece), Ruzanna Voskanyan (Armenia)
hosted by Annie Rutherford
12 noon – 1pm, Zoom, Free, Tickets here
A fascinating exploration of Europe, as seen by poets from Slovakia, Belarus, Greece and Armenia. Each of these poets is highly respected in their own country, garlanded with awards and prizes, and the aim of Versopolis is to bring them to the attention of a wider European audience. Hear them read and chat about life and work as a poet in different European contexts.
Please use the links below to download the Versopolis Chapbooks:
Ledbury Poetry Competition winners hosted by Liz Berry
2pm – 3pm, Zoom, Free,Tickets here
Hear the nine competition winners across the Child, Young People and Adult categories of the influential 2020 Ledbury Poetry Competition. The three adult winners are Kim Moore (UK), Kizziah Burton (US) and Felicity Sheehy (UK). On judging the competition, Liz Berry said “it lifts my heart to know poetry is still important to us and able to connect us across the distances. “ Will you be reading at this event next year? The deadline for the 2021 Competition, judged by Anthony Anaxagorou, is 15 July, see www.poetry-festival.co.uk for details!
Anthony Anaxagorou and Andrew McMillan, hosted by Jennifer Lee Tsai
4pm – 5pm, Zoom, £5, Tickets here
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His second collection After the Formalities (Penned in the Margins) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. ‘After the Formalities is a supreme collection. Anaxagorou’s lyrics, mapped over expansive interior and historical landscapes, feels to me as wise and weathered, and it feels to be bringing something totally new to my ear’ (Danez Smith).
After two prize-winning collections which examined the intimacies and intricacies of the physical body, McMillan’s third book, Pandemonium, marks a shift: both inward, into the difficult world of mental health, and outwards into the natural and political world. Andrew McMillan’s first collection, physical, was the first poetry collection to win, alongside many other prizes, the Guardian First Book Award.
Hosted by Ledbury Poetry Critic, Jennifer Lee Tsai, a fellow of The Complete Works programme for diversity and innovation. Jennifer’s debut poetry pamphlet is Kismet (ignitionpress, 2019).
Toward: A Masterclass with Carolyn Forché
5.30pm – 7.30pm, Zoom, £5, Tickets here
In this masterclass led by Carolyn Forché, which is open to the public, participants will hear a poem read by each poet, and will offer close readings, as well as suggestions for possible revision.
It is hoped that several approaches to editing, expansion and re-structuring will be offered, depending on the various poetics within the group.
Participants are encouraged to submit work that exemplifies current strengths and difficulties, so that comments may be helpful beyond the poem under consideration.
Limited to 10 participants, but all are encouraged to attend as observers, and will be welcome to participate in the Q&A at the end.
Participants must have published a first full-length collection. Please contact director@poetry-festival.co.uk to participate.
In Person! Sally Crabtree Poetry Bingo
6pm – 6.45pm, BBI, Free
Quirky and charming, Poetry Bingo is just like normal bingo but instead of cards with numbers on, the audience get cards with the titles of poems on. If any of these poems are performed they can tick them off and whoever ticks them all off first is the winner! Some of Sally Crabtree’s poems are performance poems – like Dream Shoes with its light up shoes or Dancing Words which has a cartwheel in it. Some are accompanied by music and others are simply wonderful poetry!
THE POET IN THE ATTIC AND THE POET IN THE WORLD: Malika Booker, Kwame Dawes & John Kinsella in dialogue with Jeremy Poynting
8pm – 9.30pm, Zoom, £5, Tickets here
Like all poets, those involved in this dialogue have spent their time “in solitary”, writing and constructing their collections. But they have all also engaged in multiple conversations. Malika Booker has long made it her practice (with Malika’s Kitchen) to work both in isolation and collaboratively with public groups and circles of other poets with whom new poems are shared. For the past six years Kwame Dawes and John Kinsella have been engaged in an almost daily call and response of poems that has produced four books (a fifth is on its way) that link Nebraska and Western Australia in the age of Trump and environmental crisis. As well as performing their own work, each poet will explore the relationship between their private spaces and the manifold points of dialogue with other poets, other books and with more public and political spaces.
Malika Booker is the author of Pepper Seed and the recent winner of the Forward Prize for best poem. Kwame Dawes is the author of more than 20 collections of poetry (the last, Nebraska) and is the recipient of many awards including the Windham/Campbell prize and the PEN award. John Kinsella is the author of over thirty collections of poetry (the last being Insomnia). His collaborations with Kwame Dawes include, Speak from Here to There, A New Beginning, Tangling with the Epic and In the Name of Our Families. Jeremy Poynting is the founder and managing editor of Peepal Tree Press.
Supported by Peepal Tree Press
Annie Rutherford
