Ledbury Poetry Player

The Ted Hughes Award-winning author of Nobody Told Me, Hollie McNish returns with Slug, a new collection of poetry and prose. From Finnish saunas and soppy otters to grief, grandparents and Kellogg’s anti-masturbation pants, Hollie ‘writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love.’ (Kae Tempest). She appears with Michael Pedersen, prize-winning Scottish poet, scribbler, stitcher. He’s unfurled…

A magical, musically highlighted spoken word performance with poet Anthony Joseph and virtuoso musicians playing improvised jazz. Sonnets for Albert remixes the form in a set of elegies for the poet’s father that navigate absentee fatherhood and masculine fragility.

American poet Nicole Sealey is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the PEN Open Book Award. Kevin Young is The New Yorker’s poetry editor and the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Hosted by Ledbury Poetry Critic Oluwaseun Olayiwola.

Readings and conversation ranging across place and displacement, intimacy and loss, self and other. James Byrne is a poet, editor, translator and visual artist. Forrest Gander writes that Places you Leave is ‘restlessly energetic and politically insistent…these are knife-sharp glimpses of the world.’

“Water that sings/ through blood and brain” permeates the mesmerizing series of contemplative poems in Sarah Hymas’s melt. Jason Allen-Paisant’s Thinking with Trees is a radical response to the pastoral
and walking traditions, in woods where dogs are welcomed but black men are suspect. Hosted by Ledbury Critic Mantra Mukim.

Brian Bilston has been described as the Banksy of poetry and Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate; with over 150,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community.

  Full of poems that will make you giggle about all things football, including being left out of the World Cup squad, mum’s opinion on Messi vs Ronaldo. 50 Ways to Score a Goal and Other Football Poems includes witty chants, a haiku or two, and fun shape poems about the beautiful game. Laugh together through…

What is the Role of the Poetry Critic? How do poetry reviews reflect diversity and the value of poetry? Who are they written for? Panel discussion with Kevin Young, Sandeep Parmar, Sarah Howe and Ledbury Poetry Critic Oluwaseun Olayiwola.

Deborah Landau is a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Her latest collection, Soft Targets follows two others in the US, The Uses of the Body and The Last
Usable Hour. Alex Dimitrov is the author of three books of poems,including Love and Other Poems, Together and by Ourselves, Begging for It.

Hear poets with forthcoming collections read and hold conversations about their work, introduced by Neil Astley in place of Dr Jo Clement who was unable to attend.  Raine Geoghegan is a UK-born poet, writer and playwright of Romany descent, and Sarah Wimbush’s poetry is rooted in Yorkshire with tales of childhood,

John Murillo’s collections are “Kontemporary and Amerikan Poetry” and “Up Jump The Boogie”. Thomas Lynch, poet, essayist and undertaker, reads from “Bone Rosary” which brings together the extraordinary work of a lifetime. Hosted by Ledbury Poetry Critic Dzifa Benson.

Mererid Hopwood, the great Welsh language poet and Professor of Languages, the first woman to win both the Bardic Chair and the Crown at the National Eisteddfod, introduces the life and work of the Chilean poet, who in 1945 became the first Hispano-American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

A unique celebration of poetry and music created and composed by women! Harpist Olivia Jageurs performs music by female composers across the ages. The audience was invited to bring their own contributions of poems to read, either by themselves or by treasured female poets. There will be selections from a Baroque suite, a fiery Spanish fandango…

Two celebrated Welsh Poets, Mererid Hopwood and Owen Sheers, introduce the work of two great Medieval bards of sixth century Wales, whose work is celebrated in the Llyfr Aneirin – The Book of Aneirin, which includes his most famous work – Y Gododdin and Llyfr Taliesin – The Book of Taliesin. 

Camino de Santiago in music and poetry. A musical journey along the Camino de Santiago walking route with harpist Olivia Jageurs, starting with the music of Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger, ending with the beloved Rodrigo guitar concerto reworked for the harp by jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby. Actor Alex Knox will guide the audience along…

In March 2020, Michael Rosen was admitted to hospital with coronavirus. What followed was months on the wards as the NHS saved his life. Throughout it nurses wrote him letters of hope and support in a diary and, as soon as he was awake, he started writing his own story.

“There’s Dante, there’s Shakespeare, and there’s Du Fu’ says Stephen Owen, author of first complete translation into English of Du Fu, China’s most famous and most loved poet. China’s tradition of poetry is one of the oldest living -the Book of Songs is earlier  than the Iliad. Du Fu (712-770) was a minor civil servant  who became a…

Backlisted host John Mitchinson discusses Christopher Logue’s ‘War Music: An Account of Homer’s Iliad’, Books 16-19 with reader and director Peter Florence and the NYT bestselling author of A Thousand Ships and Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes, superstar classicist and creator of BBC Radio 4’s Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics. Live streamed on Zoom

Singer storyteller Gecko bring his whimsical rhyming tales to Ledbury, as he releases his second  album Climbing Frame, with playful songs that cover the big things in life with wit and warmth. Gecko has previously appeared at Glastonbury, BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music. He has shared stages with the likes of Ed Sheeran, Loyle…

Elaine Beckett, Greta Stoddart, Gill Barr, and Helen Evans explore the challenge of when and how to end a poem. Reading from their own and others’ work, the effects of different types of endings are unwrapped, and considered in relation to the wider cycle of life and death. Live streamed on Zoom Weekend Pass Event  …