Blogging for Winchester Poetry Festival 2016

Hot on the trails of my post about the joys of poetry festivals, I’m happy to tell you that I will be the official Blogger at this year’s Winchester Poetry Festival which will take place October 7 – 9.

I will be posting my Festival Blogs on this site, as well as tweeting poetry snippets from my Twitter and Facebook accounts and sharing a few candid poetry snapshots on Instagram.

The Festival Programme hasn’t been released yet but I’ve had a sneak peek and can tell you that it’s a diverse, international and exciting line-up – which should come as no surprise, considering Sasha Dugdale and Keiren Phelan are this year’s Creative Directors.  More news soon or pop over to the Festival website and follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

In the meantime, there are a few early Festival events which you might want to put in your calendar and take part in, including All Day Sonnets at Winchester Discovery Centre on Saturday, April 23rd.

As part of the Shakespeare400 celebrations (400 years since Shakespeare’s death) Winchester Poetry Festival will present an all-day reading of all 154 of William Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I’ll be there, reading a sonnet, so do say hello (not mid-sonnet, obviously).

In June, the Festival is collaborating with the Test Valley Garden & Literary Festival and will be hosting a programme of poetry readings at Bere Mill, Whitchurch on Sunday 12 June.

Winchester Poetry Festival will present readings by two distinguished poets, Susan Wicks and Ruth Padel, and the poetry of John Keats, brought alive by poets Julia Bird and Mike Sims.

Also, look out for Hat Poets in July!

Following the success of our Hat Poets event in 2015 Winchester Poetry Festival is once again taking part in Hat Fair, Winchester’s annual festival of Street Theatre.  We will set up on Parchment Street on Saturday afternoon 2nd July. More details will follow shortly.

More details about everything at the Winchester Poetry Festival website.

LOTS to look forward to, so please keep in touch and I’ll keep you up-to-date with Festival news as soon as I know more.