Ledbury Poetry Festival
Founded in 1996 by a group of local poetry enthusiasts, the Ledbury Poetry Festival is now the biggest poetry festival in the UK.[1]
History
The first Ledbury Poetry Festival was held in 1997 in Ledbury, Herefordshire. It was opened by Mark Fisher, the Labour arts minister.[2] Since then, over a thousand national and international poets have taken part in the festival. Trustees include Ursula Owen, publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression; the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy; Peter Florence, founder of the Hay Festival, and Neil Astley, editor of Bloodaxe Books.
Ledbury holds its main programme over two weeks in the summer, and its work continues throughout the year, with projects that involve local primary schools and John Masefield High School, as well as hundreds of local people through its community projects.[3] The Festival also works alongside small literary publishers.
In 2009, The Guardian described the Ledbury Poetry Festival as "the largest of its kind in the UK and also the most energised, giving a real sense of poetry as an important living, contemporary literary form."[4]
In 2017 the Ledbury Poetry Festival will celebrate its 21st anniversary by launching the biannual Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collections, the only prize of this kind in the UK. This prize aims to support and encourage poets at the ‘mid-career’ stage with a prize of £5,000 for the winning second collection.[5]
Support
The Ledbury Poetry Festival has received financial support from Arts Council England, the Pennington-Mellor-Munthe Charity Trust and The Elmley Foundation.
Poets
British poets who have performed at the festival include Simon Armitage, Al Alvarez, Patience Agbabi, Wendy Cope, John Burnside, Helen Dunmore, Douglas Dunn, James Fenton, Ruth Padel, George Szirtes and Benjamin Zephaniah. International poets include Billy Collins, Mark Doty (USA), Yang Lian (China), Gozo Yoshimasu (Japan), Ko Un (Korea), Kristina Ehin (Estonia), Ali Cobby Eckerman (Australia), Basem Al-Nabriss (Palestine), Fadhil Al-Azzawi (Iraq) and Arundhathi Subramaniam (India).
External Links
References
- ^ "Book Trade Announcements - Ledbury Poetry Festival 2017: All-star cast to celebrate 21 years of the UK's biggest poetry festival". www.booktrade.info. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
- ^ Beletrina, Production:. "Versopolis | Anthology celebrates the 20th Ledbury Poetry Festival". Retrieved 2017-05-01.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) - ^ "Charity Details". beta.charitycommission.gov.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
- ^ Aitch, Iain (2009-06-26). "Event preview: Ledbury Poetry Festival, Ledbury". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
- ^ "New Poetry Award: Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collections". www.writers-online.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-01.