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 jazz singer, critic and writer George Melly. The following year 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. Patrons include the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, and Peter Florence, founder of the Hay Festival. Trustees include Ursula Owen, publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression, and Neil Astley, editor of Bloodaxe Books. The original trustees of the festival were Peter Arscott, John Burns, Alan Lloyd, Martyn Moxley, Richard Surman and Margaret Rigby.[3]

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.[4] 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."[5]

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.[6]

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).

References
  1. "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.
  2. Beletrina, Production:. "Versopolis | Anthology celebrates the 20th Ledbury Poetry Festival". Retrieved 2017-05-01.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  3. "Memorandum and Articles of Association – Ledbury Poetry Festival". Ledbury Poetry Festival. Retrieved 2017-07-13.
  4. "Charity Details". beta.charitycommission.gov.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
  5. Aitch, Iain (2009-06-26). "Event preview: Ledbury Poetry Festival, Ledbury". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
  6. "New Poetry Award: Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collections". www.writers-online.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-01.
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