Live readings 2009
The events below were part of the 2009 Festival, but they will give you a feeling for what happens at the Ledbury Poetry Festival.
Hearing a poet read and talk about their work is often illuminating, can bring a poem to life and can open up new ways into poems. For anyone wishing to heighten their enjoyment of reading and writing poetry, these events are indispensable.
1. Roger McGough: That Awkward Age
Roger McGough launches the Festival with a new collection and an evening of poems to amaze & delight! He wrestles with mortality, seeks love in the launderette, perspires in the Foreign Legion, snaps Henri Cartier-Bresson in Liverpool and jives in Macca’s trousers. He shares the pain of Lord Godiva and Mr Nightingale, considers his Final Poem and shakes a fist at Alzheimer’s.
Sponsored by Worcester University.
4. Early Bird Event: Dorothea Rosa Herliany and Linda France
Linda France introduces Dorothea Rosa Herliany, one of the most important poets writing in Indonesia today. Herliany has published eight volumes of poetry. Many of her poems are personal, with a decidedly feminist edge. Others have grown out of the rapid political and social changes that Indonesia has undergone during the last five years. Linda France lives close to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. Her poetry collections include The Simultaneous Dress (2002) and The Toast of the Kit Cat Club (2005), a biography in verse of the 18th century traveller and writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Bloodaxe). Sponsored by Arc
5. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Macdara Woods
Award-winning poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin makes a rare trip to England from Dublin. “Her poems see things anew, in a rinsed and dreamstruck light. They are at once as plain as an anecdote told on the doorstep and as haunting as a soothsayer’s greeting” (Seamus Heaney). Her collections include Acts and Monuments and The Magdalene Sermon, as well as a recent Selected Poems. Macdara Woods, Irish poet, who has published 16 books including Knowledge in The Blood: New and Selected Poems. He worked as a hop-picker in the early 1960s, and mentions that in an early poem. His latest commission is a sequence of poems based on the landscape and people of Clare Island, Co. Mayo
7. Ruth Padel on Darwin
Prize-winning poet Ruth Padel joins us to mark the bicentenary of the birth of her great-great grandfather, Charles Darwin, with a reading from her new book, Darwin: A Life in Poems. “The freedom of the form allows her to explore Darwin’s emotional and intellectual development outside the linear conventions of even the best biographies. Poetry is very good on doubt, on stasis, silence, ambivalence and loss. In Padel’s hands, it is also superb at moving from domestic minutiae to the broadest sweeps of 19th century life and thought” (Financial Times).
8. Women’s Work
Eva Salzman and Phillis Levin present Women’s Work, a treasure trove of women poets from across the English speaking world. This event will focus on American poets and you will make some new discoveries. We are thrilled to present Phillis Levin, who travels from the USA for this event. She met Allen Ginsberg at a party when she was twelve, an encounter that sparked her poem Dancing with Allen Ginsberg. Her collections include, Temples and Fields, The Afterimage, Mercury and May Day. Eva Salzman was born in New York and now lives in Britain. Her most recent book is Double Crossing: New and Selected Poems.
11. Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald is now rightly established as one of the leading poets writing in Britain today. She 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. Sleepwalk is set at night over five different phases of the moon and gives voice to a slippery crew of real river folk, among them a birdwatcher, a vicar and an articled clerk, who haunt the Severn estuary. Alice Oswald will perform Sleepwalk with trumpeter Martin Holland and Peter Oswald. She will then read from Weeds and Wild Flowers. Hosted by poet and journalist Gary Bills Geddes.
12. Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling
Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling were both connected to the British avant-garde poetry scene in the 60s and 70s and they are reunited again at Ledbury for what will be a fascinating and perspective-shifting event. Iain Sinclair’s works include Lud heat: A Book of the Dead Hamlets, Downriver, Lights out for the Territory and London Orbital. Brian Catling is a poet, sculptor, performance artist, filmmaker, academic. His work ‘Antix’, was described as, “Uncompromising, its imaginative density and sinister ire pushed the shifting relationship between performer and audience into an uneasy space” (Frieze Magazine). He is also known for his very black sense of humour. His new book of poetry Resurrecting Bobby Awl is published this year.
17. Found in translation: Polish Poets
This event, like the excellent anthology that accompanies it, offers an insight into today’s literary scene in Poland. Alexandra Buchler says, “writing without reading poetry from many different traditions would be unthinkable for the poets ... who consider poetry in translation to be part of their own literary background and an important source of inspiration.” They are: Dariusz Suska whose poems focus on two central motifs, death and childhood and Maciej Wozniak , poet and music critic, which is evident in his lyrical phrases and allusians to songs and Lieder. Chaired by translator Elzbieta Wójcik-Leese.
Sponsored by Literature Across Frontiers
18. Art of Dissent in Homogeneous Culture
Izabela Filipiak, Agnieszka Graff, and Bozena Keff will talk about new trends in Polish art and their socio-political connotations, which include feminist, disability, and lesbian/gay discourse. Their starting point will be Bozena Keff’s A Piece about Mother and Fatherland, a memoir in verse describing her complex and fascinating relationship with her imposing mother, a Holocaust survivor, as well as with Polish culture.
Co-organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London Sponsored by Ronald Duncan Foundation A part of Polska! Year.
20. Patience Agbabi and Philip Wells
With Patience Agbabi ’s new work Bloodshot Monochrome she has soared in to a new stratosphere. Previous works include R.A.W. and the flamboyant Transformatrix and she was a member of the female rap group Atomic Lip. She is known for her formal poetic excellence, her sometimes ‘dangerous’ subject matter, her verbal acrobatics. She says, “I write because my ink must flow like blood. The written must be spoken. The chasm between page and stage must be healed.” Supreme performer, Philip Wells’s new collection is Horse Whispering in the Military Industrial Complex. He wrote an ode to fashion written across women’s bodies in Harpers & Queen and a spoken word opera about Thomas Beckett performed in Canterbury Cathedral.
21. Adam Foulds and Vona Groarke
This event brings together two brilliant narrative poems, The Broken Word by Adam Foulds and Lament for Art O’Leary by Vona Groarke. Lament for Art O’Leary is a translation of the classic Irish poem. Vona Groarke’s previous collections include Juniper Street, Flight and Other People’s Houses. Costa Prize winning, The Broken Word is an extraordinarily accomplished narrative poem about Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising. This “alarming account of a forgotten colonial struggle tests poetry’s capacity and marks a brilliant debut” (Michael Longley). Adam Foulds is also a novelist, author of The Truth about These Strange Times and The Quickening Maze inspired by the life of the poet John Clare.
25. Ken Jones: Haiku Stories
Ken Jones has won the Sasakawa Prize for Original Contributions in the Field of Haikai and first place in the 2005 English Language Haibun Contest. His latest book is Stone Leek’s, 28 haiku-style stories about lives and landscapes, love and war. It is a sequel to The Parsley Bed. Jones is a Zen practitioner, teacher and author of books on socially engaged Buddhism. He is the President of the Network of Engaged Buddhists.
Enjoy green tea and almond cookies at this event.
27. Ledbury Scribes with Thony Handy
An opportunity for Scribes to read their own poems with added attraction of published poems, Not Averse to Verse by Scribe member Tony Gittings, Event led by Thony Handy on his launch tour reading from In Particular to musical accompaniment by Andy Davies.
Sponsored by Rotary Club
The Homend Poets are proud to launch their second collection to coincide with this year’s festival. Come join compère extraordinaire Nick Halligan and the bards for local spoken word and music. Contributions are welcome, especially on the subjects of humour, a character or relationships
37. In conversation: Eddie Linden and Alan Brownjohn
Eddie Linden is a remarkable man. After a difficult early life, he devoted his tenacious talent to poetry – as publisher of Aquarius and as a friend and champion of other poets. Over 100 of his fellow artists showed their respect and affection by contributing to Eddie’s Own Aquarius – a celebratory volume on his 70th birthday. One of those friends and fellow-poets in Alan Brownjohn, who has published twelve books of poems and a Collected. Brownjohn combines technical mastery of the craft of poetry with wit and shafts of beguiling fantasy. Come and listen to these two wise, opinionated poets as they converse and read from their own work. And, when the readings are over, relax in their company with a glass of wine.
40. Cross Channel Currents: French and English Poets
A lively evening of French and English poetry, which muses on differences and similarities and celebrates the launch of Valérie Rouzeau’s new book, Cold Spring in Winter. She is introduced to Ledbury by T.S. Eliot prize finalist Stephen Romer, whose book Yellow Studio shows his French affinities. He also edited 20th Century French Poems. He was born in Hertfordshire and is now a lecturer at the University of Tours in France. We also welcome Susan Wicks, who translated Rouzeau’s book and is a prizewinning poet and novelist. Her latest collection is De-iced, published by Bloodaxe.
41. Poetry London Launch: Chase Twichell and Paul Farley
The launch of Poetry London this year transfers to Ledbury with readings from two very distinguished contributors to the summer issue. Paul Farley, ‘one of the most formally gifted and imaginative poets to have emerged in recent years’ has swept the board of prizes for his three books. Chase Twichell, whose reading at Ledbury will be her first in this country, is one of America’s leading poets. ‘Suppose you had Sappho’s passion… and Dickinson’s sweet wit, mixed into a brilliant connective of ideas, scenes, creatures and moods, then you would have the poems of Chase Twichell.’ And, when the readings are over, relax in their company with a glass of wine.
Malvern Writers' Circle started in 1948 and is more vibrant than ever with some fifty members ranging in age from 16 to 102. A formidable, eclectic line-up will take the stage at Ice Bytes, including playwright Peter Sutton, author of the splendid Elgar and Alice; poet/novelists Wendy Grounds, Fran Martel and Richard Wall; poet/musician Muriel Forrest and poets Denise King, John Collins and Linda Blackett. They will also be joined by Poet in Residence of the Robert Frost Society, the multi-talented Michael Wyndham Thomas.
43. Angela France and Eric Gregory Award Winners
Angela France lives in Gloucestershire and works for a local youth charity. She runs a monthly live poetry event, Buzzwords and has had poems published in a number of poetry journals and small press anthologies. Occupation, being launched at Ledbury, is her second collection. This event will also feature the winners of the 2009 Eric Gregory Awards. They are starting out, so come along and support them.
44. Debut Poetry: Kathryn Simmonds, Frances Leviston and Paul Batchelor
Debut Poetry introduces three outstanding new poets. Each received a prestigious Eric Gregory Award, and their work has appeared in the country’s leading poetry magazines and newspapers. Paul Batchelor’s The Sinking Road was praised by Simon Armitage as ‘keenly felt; passionately, precisely and lyrically conveyed’. Frances Leviston’s Public Dream, was described by The Times as ‘superb’ and short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Kathryn Simmonds’s Sunday at the Skin Launderette won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Jackie Kay praised the way Simmonds ‘invests the everyday world with an extraordinary luminosity.’
45. Ros Barber and Glyn Maxwell
American-born British poet, Ros Barber is often compared to Philip Larkin, in her deft use of rhyme and meter, her readability, her exploration of the themes of loss and her gentle humour. Her latest collection is Material and she is a striking performer of her poems. Glyn Maxwell returns to Ledbury after ten years, which have seen the publication of three acclaimed collections The Nerve, Sugar Mile and Hide Now. His writing encompasses British and American influences and inspirations and he is often compared to W.H. Auden and Robert Frost.
46. Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk
Alan Halsey will talk about his latest work, the Lives of the Poets, which he has been working on for the past eight years. As the typical literary biography gets heavier and denser, Halsey ’s 191 lives take the opposite approach: each Life is a poem distilled in a few highly-concentrated lines. The famous (Chaucer, Wyatt, Milton, Pope) appear alongside the lesser known and many forgotten poets, including a large number of women, are saluted. Geraldine Monk is an electrifying performer of her poetry, which has appeared in many anthologies and maps the places she has lived with a visceral intensity, as if places possess her. This will be an event full of discoveries and contrasts.
Poet and Booker Prize winning novelist Ben Okri will talk about his latest work Tales of Freedom, which brings together poetry and story. His other works include An African Elegy, Mental Flight, Dangerous Love and A Famished Road. He says, “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” His work does indeed face brutality and pain, written with intensity and beauty. Born in Nigeria, he is also vice-president of the English Centre of International PEN and was awarded an OBE. This is a marvellous opportunity to hear him speak and read.
49. Early Bird Event: Kenneth Steven and Jane Griffiths
Wildscape brings together Kenneth Stevens’ best known poems from twenty years of writing. It forms a journey through the year comprising poems from Highland Perthshire and the Hebrides. “There is in every poem some gleam or grain of that lost native country, Eden” (Kathleen Raine). As a novelist Kenneth Steven translated the Nordic Prize-winning Norwegian novel, The Half Brother. Jane Griffiths was born in England and brought up in the Netherlands and she paints with words, sometimes with the eye of an abstract artist, sometimes in the vein of a Dutch still-life painter. Griffiths’s third and most recent book, Another Country: New and Selected Poems includes a new collection, Eclogue Over Merlin Street.
51. Amjad Nasser and remembering Sargon Boulus
Amjad Nasser is a Jordanian poet who has lived in London since 1987 where he is managing editor and cultural editor of Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily newspaper. He has published many volumes of poetry and one travel book. His first English collection published in July 2009 is Shepherd of Solitude, Selected Poems. This event will also celebrate one of Iraq’s best known and popular contemporary poets, Sargon Boulus, who died in 2007. Samuel Shimon will introduce and show his short film of Sargon Boulus talking about his poetry and reading two of his poems, including the title poem, Knife Sharpener, from the collection in his own translation that is published posthumously by Banipal Books.
54. Michael Horovitz
Michael Horovitz projects images with music, and sings and reads from A New Waste Land: Timeship Earth at Nillennium, his most political work to date, described by D J Taylor in the Independent as “A deeply felt clarion-call from the radical underground”. Horovitz is a compelling performer who was hailed by Allen Ginsberg as a “Popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation Sensitive Bard”. His Midsummer Morning Jog Log (illustrated by Peter Blake), and Wordsounds & Sightlines will also be available, along with the New Departures POW!, POM! and POT! Anthologies. After this event, join Michael Horovitz in the Festival Common Room for drinks and conversation.
Benjamin Zephaniah’s live appearances generate the kind of excitement a pop star would envy. These days he is a national treasure who towers over the British poetry scene. His poetry crops up everywhere, often in the most surprising places: on You Tube he performed in a London black cab and the Big Chill Festival broadcast his version of Tam Lyn with music by the band The Imagined Village. In an inspired Poetry Society placement he spent six months in the chambers of Michael Mansfield QC soon after the Stephen Lawrence enquiry had reported. The placement poems appear in Too Black, Too Strong. “Zephaniah’s greatest assets are his wide-ranging curiosity and his sense of humour” (Peter Forbes).
57. Moroccan Poetry and Food
Three Moroccan poets – Hassan Najmi, Ouidad Benmoussa, and Siham Bouhlal – take us into the heart of Morocco’s vibrant poetry scene.
Hassan Najmi has published four collections of poems, one novel and two books of essays. He was President of the Moroccan Union of Writers from 1998 to 2005 and is presently director-general of the Book and Publications Department of Morocco’s Ministry of Culture. Ouidad (Widad) Benmoussa has published two collections, including Between Two Clouds in 2006. Her first collection, The Imminent Root (2001), established her as a poet to watch. Siham Bouhlal has three collections of her own poems, Poèmes bleus (2005), Songe d’une nuit berbère ou La tombe d’épines (2007) and her latest Corps Lumière (2008) with a fourth in preparation. Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet, novelist, translator and filmmaker and will introduce the poets. The evening’s readings will be in English, Arabic, and French.
Moroccan food will be served.
Bar available.
Festival Open Mic:
58. Hosted by Daljit Nagra and Jo Bell with Asko Künnap
This is an opportunity to share your poems with a supportive and friendly audience. Daljit Nagra is a poet who writes accomplished and dextrous poems and performs them brilliantly. Jo Bell’s collection is called Navigation and she is a fabulous performer, currently touring with Fourpenny Circus.
Bloodaxe Editor Neil Astley will close the event with an after-word on the perils of getting published, or not!
Sign up to perform when you arrive. Everyone will be limited to two poems or four minutes maximum.
BYO (Bring your own drinks, we provide corkscrews and glasses.)
59. Poetry Breakfast with Shedman John Davies
62. Fred D’Aguiar and Christopher James
Fred D’Aguiar is a major poet, novelist and playwright, who has won many prizes in Britain and abroad and this is a rare opportunity to hear him read and speak, as he now resides in the USA. Although born in London, he lived in Guyana until he was twelve, then returned to England where the highly politicised atmosphere of the British black community of the 60s and 70s became a major influence on his work. He draws on his dual British/Guyanese heritage and also explores the legacy of slavery. His works include the acclaimed Mama Dot, Airy Hall and recently Continental Shelf, which makes the journey through youth and young adulthood to the present day, taking in the 2006 shootings at Virginia Tech University, where he now works. Christopher James has won the Ledbury Poetry Competition twice and now he has triumphed in the National Poetry Competition. James’s poem, Farewell to the Earth, was chosen by judges and poets Brian Patten, Frieda Hughes and Jack Mapanje. His debut collection is The Invention of Butterfly.
Supported by The Poetry Society
64. August Kleinzahler and John Hartley Williams
American poet, August Kleinzahler, is riding high after a series of high-profile awards and now he travels to Ledbury for this unique event. If you have not heard him read before, this will be a baptism of fire. He was born in 1949 in New Jersey, a place with which he maintains strong ties, despite living in San Francisco. His collections include Sleeping it Off in Rapid City and his latest The Strange Hours Travellers Keep. He is known as a marvellous reader of his own work and readings are treated as performances. “He draws primarily on the language of the street – colloquial American usages – and hears the music inherent in ordinary speech” (Clive Wilmer). Subversive and satirical, inventive, wry and unconventional, John Hartley Williams has long been celebrated for his maverick sensibility, for his outsider’s take on the way we live our lives. His latest collections are Cafe des Artistes and a retrospective called The Ship.
65. Daljit Nagra and Barry Taylor
Daljit Nagra burst onto the poetry scene with his electrifying debut and he is the first poet to win the Forward Prize for both his first collection of poetry and for its title poem, Look We Have Coming To Dover!. Nagra’s poems stretch language in entirely new directions and his performances, like his words, are as energetic and as alive as quicksilver. Nagra’s parents came from the Indian side of the Punjab and Nagra grew up in Yiewsley (near Heathrow) and Sheffield. Barry Taylor won the Ledbury Poetry Festival competition with his poem Being Fourteen. Taylor’s work has been broadcast on Radio 4, set by a composer at the Leeds Leider Festival and carved in stone for the Arts in the Peak 'Companion Stones' project. He lives and teaches in the Midlands. This event is hosted by Sally Baker, Executive Director of Ty Newydd, the National Writers’ Centre for Wales.
66. Hugo Williams and Rhian Edwards
Hugo Williams, the Fred Astaire of the poetry world, makes nuanced, multi-layered poems, which appear stunningly simple and have an immediate and lasting impact. For this reason he is much-loved and his return to Ledbury having published a new Collected and been nominated for the Costa Poetry Award for Dear Room is a welcome and delightful event. Other works include Billy’s Rain, a sensational chronicle of a drawn-out love affair that won the T.S. Eliot Prize. Hugo Williams is also a journalist, with a column in the Times Literary Supplement and a career that includes the New Statesman, Harpers and Queen and Punch Magazine. Rhian Edwards is an astounding performance poet, who has appeared on Radio 3. Her first collection of poems is called Parade the Fib.
67. Frank Reeve
Join us for the Festival finale with American poet Frank Reeve accompanied by jazz duo John Lake and Phil Paton. As a young man Frank Reeve drove combine-harvesters in the Midwest wheat fields, and worked as a longshoreman on the Hudson River docks. He taught in Moscow and Leningrad and translated for Robert Frost when he met Khrushchev in 1962. His son is the actor Christopher Reeve. He will perform from The Blue Cat Walks the Earth. The Blue Cat was in New Orleans when the levees broke, in Baghdad when the killings started and he is worried about the state of the banking system. He is a courteous, outspoken, well-read somewhat randy anarchist ready to lay down one of his lives for what he believes. Don’t miss this rare chance to hear this award-winning, passionate poet.
Live readings 2009 highlights...
Roger McGough
Shedman - John Davies
Benjamin Zephaniah
Ben Okri
Amjad Nasser event
Neil Astely and Michael Horovitz
Ruth Padel