This year's poetry festival...

Chloe Garner, Festival Director: "This Festival could be called adventures in poetry because we have travelled to the far corners of the globe, looked under every stone and climbed every mountain to bring you

Benjamin Zephaniah’s live appearances generate the kind of excitement a pop star would envy.

a Festival that is passionate about poetry in all its guises and passionate about bringing the richness and variety of this world to you. Journey with us! Immerse yourself in performances, readings, writing workshops, music, talks, street events and family events. This Festival could not happen without the many volunteers, Friends and

Alice Oswald is one of Carol Ann Duffy’s Festival highlights, as well as Hugo Williams and Daljit Nagra

supporters who work with such enthusiasm, patience and joy, doing all manner of jobs and giving the Festival its unique, welcoming and friendly atmosphere."

The new Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy picked out Alice Oswald as one of her personal highlights in this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival, describing her as "an English lyric genius and arguably the most relevant poet of our times". Alice has won the Forward Prize for The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Dart. She arrives in Ledbury with two acclaimed new collections A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wild Flowers.

Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy

"This year's programme offers a truly fantastic array of poets in a feast of world-class events"
Carol Ann Duffy, May 2009