POETRY-NEXT-THE-SEA- Wells-on-the-Sea, Norfolk

A poetry festival held on the quay at Wells-on-the-Sea, Norfolk.

 2011 has the theme of “Myth and Magic”. The line-up is headed by Anne Stevenson, Robin Robertson, Owen Sheers and Clare Pollard.

Anne Stevenson, a veteran poet, is also famous for her biographies of Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop. She will read with the highly acclaimed Scots poet Robin Robertson,whose The Wrecking Light, was short listed for the 2011 Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. His translation of Euripides’ play Medea was recently dramatised for stage and radio.

Poet, Owen Sheers. The screen version of Resistance, his first novel, starring Michael Sheen and Andrea Riseborough, is now in postproduction. Owen will also present and introduce his well received documentary on Second World War “Battlefield Poet: Keith Douglas”, first shown on BBC 4 in November 2010. He will be sharing the stage with Clare Pollard, whose fourth collection of poems, Changeling, has been recommended by the Poetry Book Society and will be published in April. We look forward to being amongst the first able to present this work at a public reading

In addition, Professor Marina Warner, CBE, polymath and doyenne of the worlds of Myth and Magic, will give a talk – “Word Magic: Scheherazade's Way”, inspired by The 1001 Nights: a Study of Enchantment, to be published by Chatto later this year. She has recently been elected as President of the British Comparative Literature Association, 2010-2013. 

An award winning Faber poet Heather Phillipson will be reading together with the winner of the Café Writers` Award - Angus Sinclair. Heather Phillipson, Eric Gregory and Faber Award winner also specialises as an artist, working with the moving image. Angus Sinclair, Café Writers Commission winner 2011, is also a wrestler who finds time away from the ring to study narrative form, in both written and visual language

Who? As above

When? 6 - 8 May, 2011

Where? Wells-on-the-Sea, Norfolk. Most events take place at the Maltings, Staithe Street.

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How much? Season Ticket (giving entry to all events) £45. Others individually priced

Festival Website: http://www.poetry-next-the-sea.com/

Programme?

Friday May 6th, 2011

Saturday May 7th, 2011

Sunday May 8th, 2011

Poet Biographies

RONALD BLYTHE’s books include, The Age of Illusion, Akenfield, The View in Winter, Divine Landscapes, The Assassin, First Friends, Word from Wormingford and Outsiders. He is an associate editor of the New Wessex edition of the works of Thomas Hardy and President of the John Clare Society. He has received the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Award, the Somerset Maugham Travel Scholarship and the Benson Medal for Literature.

KEVIN CROSSLEY-HOLLAND is co-founder of Poetry-next-the-Sea. His recent books include a memoir of childhood, The Hidden Roads, and Waterslain Angels, a novel for children set in North Norfolk. Last year he was shortlisted to be Children’s Laureate, and next year he will publish his new and selected poems, The Mountains of Norfolk. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

JENNY CUNNINGHAM is a passionate lover of poetry, and has been a Friend of Poetry-next-the-Sea since the beginning. She is a story-teller and a traditional folk singer, specialising in ballads.

JOE DUNTHORNE – Faber New Poet 2010.
Joe’s debut novel, Submarine (Penguin) is being made into a film by Warp Films. It won the Curtis Brown prize and has been translated into eight languages. His poetry has been published in Poetry Review, Magma and New Welsh Review and his debut pamphlet will be published by Faber in May. He is a striker for the England Writers’ Football Team.

LAURA ELLIOTT is a Norwich University College of the Arts Creative Writing graduate. Following graduation, she won a Café Writers Norfolk commission, and is currently travelling between Norwich and Novi Sad, working on her first pamphlet. This collection explores the relationship between two cities, focusing on the bridging of place through language and perceptions of defamiliarisation. Laura has also been published in Iota, Magma and a Gatehouse Press anthology.

CECILIA EVANS trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1974 to 1976. She worked in the theatre for 10 years before founding the London Academy of Performing Arts, a classical acting school. Cecilia has trained professional working actors for 30 years, specialising in voice production, voice and text and acting techniques.

GREY GOWRIE taught English and American literature at Harvard and University College London. He has been Chairman of the Arts Council of England and Provost of the Royal College of Art and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Third Day New and Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in 2008.

RACHEL HANNYNGTON is Poetry-next-the-Sea’s 2010 festival artist. Rachel painted her way through successful careers as an actor/mime artist and a BBC Radio 4 broadcaster, before settling in Norfolk 15 years ago to concentrate on her art. She is building a reputation as a portrait and figure painter and is currently working on a new body of work, inspired by recent travels in southern India. For this year’s festival, she will be looking at the connection between poetry and painting, exploring the landscape of the head and the heart.

HUGH LUPTON has worked as a storyteller since the early 1980s. He tells stories from many cultures but specialises in Celtic, English and Greek mythology. His Praise Songs celebrating the connection between biography and myth have been widely celebrated. In 2006 Hugh with Daniel Morden won the Classical Association award for their work on The Iliad. He won the BBC Folk Song of the Year award with Chris Wood and has published several collections of folk-tales.

SAM RIVIERE – Faber New Poet 2010. Sam co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives, and is currently working towards a PhD at the University of East Anglia. He is a recipient of a 2009 Eric Gregory Award.

CORAL RUMBLE is featured in Favourite Poets (Hodder). She has worked in many schools, with all age groups. Her three published collections are, Creatures, Teachers and Family Features, Breaking the Rules, and My Teacher’s as Wild as a Bison. Coral has also contributed to more than 100 anthologies. She is one of the writers of the popular Cbeebies TV series Poetry Pie and is the author of the Pinkasaurus stories on Cbeebies Radio.

JO SHAPCOTT is President of the Poetry Society and Professor of Poetry at Royal Holloway College. Her book, Poems 1988 - 1998 brings together a selection of poetry from her three earlier collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998). She has won the Commonwealth Prize, the Forward Prize and the National Poetry Competition twice. She has a Cholmondeley Award and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Faber is publishing her next book of poems, Of Mutability, in July.

ANGUS SINCLAIR is a poet, photo artist and professional wrestler. His work in these disciplines explores a minimalist approach to the structure of narrative. He is a Café Writers Norfolk commission winner.

PAULINE STAINER is a freelance writer and tutor. Her book Crossing the Snowline (Bloodaxe 2003), which drew on 5 earlier books, as well as a new collection A Litany of High Waters, were Poetry Society Recommendations and so too were her collections The Lady & the Hare, The Honeycomb, Sighting the Slave Ship and The Ice-Pilot Speaks. In 1996 her fourth collection The Wound-dresser’s Dream was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. She was given a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry by the Society of Authors in 2009.

JON STALLWORTHY’s books include Rounding the Horn: Collected Poems; prize-winning biographies of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice; Singing School, ‘the autobiography we would like all poets to write’ (Oxford Today); critical studies of Yeats’s poetry; editions of Owen’s Complete Poems and Fragments and Henry Reed’s Collected Poems; translations of the poetry of Alexander Blok and Boris Pasternak. Having been a Professor of English Literature at Cornell and Oxford, he is now emeritus professor at Oxford University and a Senior Research Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

JACK UNDERWOOD – Faber New Poet 2009. Jack is currently studying towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, where he also teaches English Literature and Creative Writing. He is a librettist, musician and co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives. Faber published his debut pamphlet in October 2009 and his poems also feature in Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe). He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007.

TOM WARNER – Faber New Poet 2010. Tom was poet-in-residence to Newark-on-Trent as part of the Poetry-on-Trent project during 2009, supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council of England. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2001.

JULIA WEBB has a first class honours degree in Creative Writing from Norwich University College of the Arts. She is currently on the University of East Anglia’s MA course in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Veto, Writing Out of Place and the Gatehouse Press anthology Spring. She was short-listed for the Bridport Prize in 2008 and 2009 and is a Café Writers Norfolk commission winner.

Previous festivals: Michael Symmons Roberts, Annie Freud, Helen Mort, Benjamin Morris and Ian Cartland
Andrea Porter, Dean Parkin and Meirion Jordan, Kelly Kanayama and Ben Parker, Hugo Williams and Fleur Adcock

We apprecicate you insights into literary festivals that you might have attended or are hoping to get too, or your views on award winning books.

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