Talks

Sunday 1 July

22. Leaps, Arcs, Transitions: A Craft Talk with Jane           Hirshfield        2.45pm – 1.45pm  Burgage Hall £6                            Jane Hirshfield gives a craft talk about how each of these things function in individual poems and explores how they might work over the course of a manuscript.

26. Paul Muldoon: The Word on the Street: Parnassus and Tin Pan Alley

The Poetry Society Annual Lecture                                            4.15pm – 5.15pm The Community Hall £10
What makes a poem a poem and a song a song? The celebrated Irish poet Paul Muldoon introduces some of his new poems and song lyrics and discusses the impact of one genre on the other, referring to his own work and poets such as Langland, Masefield and Browning.

Sponsored by The Poetry SocietyThe Poetry Society, Ronald Duncan Literary Foundation

Monday 2 July

32. Tokens for the Foundlings

5pm – 6.15pm Burgage Hall £8
Foundling babies were given new names. The only way that babies left at the hospital could be identified, should a parent ever return to claim their child, was through tokens pinned to their clothes. Museum Director Caro Howell will give an illustrated talk about these poignant objects and poet Tony Curtis from Glamorgan will read poems by contributors to this moving anthology, including Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Helen Dunmore and Michael Longley.

Tuesday 3 July

36. Blake’s Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre

6.45pm – 7.45pm Burgage Hall £8                                                 Blake says Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion is created for ‘the mouth of a true orator’ – and when Susanne Sklar lets the poem’s angelmorphic characters speak, their strange and wonderful stories emerge. Former actor, now Oxford University based author, Susanne’s talk will introduce you to Blake’s mythopoetic system – before guiding you through a journey from Ulro to Eden/Eternity.

37. Visionary Cartography

8.30pm – 9.30pm Burgage Hall £8                                              Andrea McLean gives an illustrated talk on the concept of Visionary Cartography as seen in the work of William Blake, medieval Mappa Mundi and her own painting - maps that seek to represent the infinite in the moment. Slade School of Art graduate, Andrea McLean lives in Ledbury. Her painting A Contemporary Mappa Mundi, made in Hereford Cathedral, hangs as part of the permanent collection outside the map room in the British Library.

Friday 6 July

56. Nikola Madzirov in Conversation

4.15pm – 5.15pm Burgage Hall £8
Award-winning Macedonian poet, backed by Charles Simic, who reads at International festivals all over the world, Nikola Madzirov calls himself 'an involuntary descendant of refugees,' referring to his family's flight from the Balkan Wars a century ago. He is compared to Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer and said of his own work, ‘In order to be able to write it is necessary to travel both through the world and through yourself.’

Sponsored by Southbank Centre

Saturday 7 July

62. The Future of the Book

11am – 12 noon Burgage Hall £8                                                    Join us for provocative and lively discussion with Dave Addey, MD of Agant, creators of award-winning mobile apps (including the QI app and QI interestingometer) and Henry Volans, Head of Digital at Faber who will demo Faber’s new and very ambitious Shakespeare's Sonnets for iPad. Hosted by Neil Astley, Festival publisher-in-residence.