Virtual Poetry Festival

Welcome to the second Virtual Poetry Festival, bringing you highlights from the 2009 programme. The idea is to reflect the various kinds of poetry events that happen and to give the uninitiated a flavour. For those who came to the Festival, here is a chance to revisit a favourite event or hear something you may have missed.

These recordings reflect how hearing a poet talk about their work can be illuminating, funny and insightful. Each reading is unique to the place and time, flavoured by the experiences the reader has had travelling to and being in Ledbury, meeting and reading with fellow poets, the atmosphere in the audience and the many other moods and happenings that temper the reading.

As I watch the events unfold, I begin to see how poets are choosing to read poems that respond to a poem read by another poet earlier in the day or week, that the readings become a kind of conversation and this not only reflects the generous way that poets communicate and respond to each other, but also deepens the experience for the listener. Which is another way of saying, don’t come to just one or two events at the Festival next year, come to everything!

The recordings below may take a little time to load so please be patient. They're worth the wait!

Polar Bear & Zena Edwards       Kenneth Steven
 

Valérie Rouzeau                           John Hartley Williams

 

August Kleinzahler                       Rhian Edwards

 

 

 

2009 Virtual Poetry Festival performers:

Mercury Prize nominated jazz band Polar Bear and Zena Edwards create poetry and music together for the first time at Ledbury Poetry Festival. They will continue their collaboration at the South Bank on 23 March – experience it if you can.

Kenneth Steven is an earthy poet strongly rooted in his Highland Perthshire home. His latest collection is Wildscape and we hear the wonderful poem Otters.

Valérie Rouzeau launched her book Cold Spring in Winter at Ledbury and read for the first time with her translator, the poet Susan Wicks. This was an intense and moving reading. 

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. Here he reads the magnificent title poem from Cafe des Artistes.

August Kleinzahler travelled all the way from San Francisco to perform at the Festival. His latest collection is The Strange Hours Travellers Keep.

Rhian Edwards’ first collection of poems is called Parade the Fib. She gave a bold, funny and impressive performance.