2022 Festival Programme
Welcome to our 2022 Programme
You may scroll down to the Schedule below which is in date order or click on a button to start with Online events and workshops from Monday 31st October or jump to the Weekend from Friday 4th Nov
We are delighted that Jessica Jane Charleston will be our Festival Artist
Book Workshops or Events Here
2022 Pricing
Online events (Zoom) are free
but donations requested
Venue Events are £10pp*
All Workshops are £20pp
*Weekend Passes
Venue Event Pass - £60pp
Livestream Event Pass - £20pp
10:30am
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Online Workshop
Anna Selby - 'Rewilding Poetry: An Ecology of Listening and Writing'
Poetry can be a powerful tool for speaking up for the environment in multifaceted ways. The poems we’ll look at are from all over the world, with translations from German, Chinese, Japanese and Irish.
90min W1
1:30pm
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Online Workshop
Helen Mort - 'Working with Silence'
In this workshop, we'll consider how 'silence' can occupy a contestedrole in our work. We'll discuss topics from the dramatic pause, the line break and the unsaid to times when silence can be political.
90min W2
THE FROGMORE PAPERS AT 100- presented by Jeremy Page
In this event, the story of the Papers will be told by founding editor Jeremy Page, with readings from poets who have contributed to the journal over the last four decades.
with Susan Wicks, Janet Sutherland, Michael Swan, John Freeman
7:00pm
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Online Reading
60min E2
WEDNESDAY
10:30am
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Online Workshop
Holly Hopkins - 'Talking to Strangers'
In this workshop, we will look at poems which use chance encounters – real and imagined – to unlock new thoughts and ideas. We will use these poems as jumping-off points for our own work. There will be lots of exercises to generate new ideas and starting points for our own poems.
90min W3
Sarah Westcott - 'Magical Thinking'
What is meant by 'magic' in poetry? From prayers to myth, manifestos, curses and charms, poems can create ‘something’ out of nothing, enacting a material transformation.
1:30pm
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Online Workshop
90min W4
NEW COLLECTIONS ON POLITICS AND ENVIRONMENT FROM THREE US POETS
with André Naffis-Sahely, Christopher Soto and Jenny Xie
Join these three exciting poets as they discuss their latest collections.
7:00pm
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Online Reading
60min E3
THURSDAY
10:30am
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Online Workshop
Karl Knights - 'Writing Good Spirits and Evil Spirits'
Czeslaw Milosz once wrote that he hoped ‘that good spirits, not evil ones,’ would choose poets ‘for their instrument.’
90min W5
Polly Atkin - 'Precarious Property: Writing in, through and of the Body'
We all live in and write from our bodies.
1:30pm
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Online Workshop
90min W6
7:00pm
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Online Reading
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON DISABILITY: FOUR POETS
read from their ground-breaking, prize-winning work.
Polly Atkin, Karl Knights, Daniel Sluman, Hannah Hodgson
60min E4
10:30am
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Online Workshop
Greta Stoddart - 'Moving Poetry'
Looking at both the emotional power of a poem as well as exploring its movement as a whole we’ll play around with the shape of the poem, its breath and beating heart.
90min W7
11:00am
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Workshop in the Gallery
Sue Wallace-Shaddad - 'Unpacking a Sense of Place'
Sue will consider the ways in which we are affected by ‘place’. Participants will be asked to reflect on what ‘place’ means for them, whether a physical place or a position accorded to them. What place do you hold in your family? How can you evoke geographical place?
90min W8
1:00pm
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Online Reading
ARTISTS, LOVERS, GHOSTS and FOOLS A lunchtime reading with Holly Hopkins, Greta Stoddart, Dean Atta and Shazea Quraishi
60min E5
2:15pm
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Workshop in the Gallery
Fokkina McDonnell - 'That Special Place'. NEW ADDITION
In this workshop we will explore and review several techniques that help us connect more securely with our creativity, manage our internal states, and use our mental and creative resources effectively. You’ll also be able to use the techniques in performing poems ‘live’ and for podcasts. They are sound psychological techniques which the workshop presenter has used in her previous career as a NLP psychotherapist and EMDR consultant.
90min W9
2:30pm
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Ballroom Reading
SUFFOLK POETRY SOCIETY CELEBRATES 70 YEARS
Suffolk Poetry Society, celebrating its 70th birthday, launches an anthology of 70 poems chosen and introduced by Elizabeth Cook. Readers will include
Kate Foley, Ivor Murrell, Ian Griffiths, Elizabeth Soule, Sue Mobbs, Antony Johae, Lizzi Thistlethwayte, Sue Foster, Sue Wallace-Shaddad.
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Also Live-streamed
60min E6
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Free
04:00pm
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Festival Opening
FESTIVAL OPENING and EXHIBITION
Come and join us for a welcome with tea, cake and welcome words
‘OUR WHOLE SELVES - NEW WORK AND RECENT DEBUTS
Kathy Pimlott, Ramona Herdman, Pam Thompson, Sarah Mnatzaganian, Fokkina McDonnell read together after two and half years meeting online
05:30pm
-
Ballroom reading
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Also Live-streamed
75min E7
08:30pm
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After Dinner Event
After Dinner Social upstairs in the Ballroom
Kate Noakes reads new work and hosts Open Mic.
90+min E8
8:30am
-
Breakfast Meeting
South Lookout
BREAKFAST EVENT - Vanessa Raison hosts a morning get together with croissants and coffee to discuss writing poems about the sea at the South Lookout Tower (Space limited).
60min E9
Rebecca Goss - 'A Catalogue of Skies’
When we think of the sky, it is easy to think of how benign we know it to be. We all store particular blue skies and warm suns that, at one time, we have flourished beneath. Yet the sky can rage above us.
9:30am
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Workshop in the Gallery
90min W10
9:30am
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Online Workshop
Sarala Estruch - ‘An Inheritance: Writing Poems of Memory and Family History’
Everyone has a history – a personal and familial history, which can provide abundant material for writing poetry. If, like me, you believe that uncovering untold histories – whether personal, familial, or national – is important, and a vital part of the poet’s work, then join me for a workshop of reading and discussing poets who do just that.
90min W11
11:30am
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Ballroom Reading
MICHAEL LASKEY AND POETS FROM VITAL INDEPENDENT PRESSES - Michael reads and introduces John Lynch, Martin Hayden, Elizabeth Cook, D. A. Prince.
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Also Live-streamed
75min E10
01:15pm
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Lunchtime Talk Ballroom
THE MISERICORD AND THE TENNIS NET: A MATTER OF FORM
A Talk by Christine Webb. Poetry began as an art of the ear, spoken or sung to an audience who were not going to go away and read it. It needed all the helps it could summon up, structures of sound and repetition to make it memorable. But in a literate society, does a ‘sound-world’ matter?
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Also Live-streamed
60min E11
2:30pm
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Workshop in the Gallery
Arji Manuelpillai - 'Poetry for Change'
Come with me on a journey of protest. Throughout my career I’ve been driven by a need to create sustainable social change. I’ve worked with communities across the world raising awareness about causes that I feel are just and ethical. I believe wholeheartedly in poetry as a means for change
90min W12
3:00pm
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Ballroom Reading
LIFE AT ITS LIMITS: FOREST, CITY, EARTH, UNIVERSE
with Susannah Hart, Mina Gorji, Stav Poleg, Stewart Carswell
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Also Live-streamed
60min E12
4:30pm
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Ballroom Reading
SYLVIA PLATH AT 90 – The Nine Arches Anthology
with Sarah Corbett, Sarah Westcott, Rebecca Goss, Tiffany Atkinson
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Also Live-streamed
60min E13
0 6:00pm
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Ballroom Reading
THE KINARA COLLECTIVE - POETRY FROM THE SHORELINE
with Anita Pati, Gita Ralleigh, Sarala Estruch, Rushika Wick
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Also Live-streamed
60min E14
08:30pm
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After Dinner Event in the Ballroom
POETRY PERFORMANCE with Arji Manuelpillai followed by Finished Creatures Poetry Showcase
90+ min E15
9:30am
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Workshop in the Gallery
Kathy Pimlott - 'Making the Everyday Sing'
In this workshop we’ll look at how very ordinary stuff– kitchen utensils, shops, routine tasks – can be the launchpad into meditations on love, life, death and everything in between
90min W13
9:30am
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Online Workshop
Stav Poleg - 'Imagined Cities'
In this workshop, participants will be invited to create their own unique cities and metropolises in the process of working on their poems. We will experiment with writing about familiar cities as well as places we have never been – real and imagined.
90min W14
11:30am
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Ballroom Reading
POETRY AND PHYSICS – MAGMA 84 LAUNCH READING
Join Magma editors Stav Poleg and Susannah Hart in celebrating the launch of Magma 84 on the theme of Physics. Come and listen to poetry that engages with light, time, matter and space and meet some of our brilliant contributors!
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Also Live-streamed
60min E16
1:00pm
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Lunchtime Talk in the Ballroom
THE LASCAUX NOTEBOOKS: ICE AGE POETRY
After a talk and discussion ledby Philip Terry on Champerret as the writer of The Lascaux Notebooks, the discussion will turn to talking about Champerret as invented.
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Also Live-streamed
60min E17
2:45pm
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Workshop in the Gallery
Philip Terry - ‘Writing Poetry Though Ice Age Signs’
The workshop will explore contemporary versions of the ancient form of the riddle. It will look at Ice Age signs from the caves at Lascaux, including upside down “V’s”, rows of dots, signs resembling spears and so on. What might these signs mean? We will write poems in response.
90min W15
03:00pm
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Ballroom Reading
DEBATING THE CRAFT - THE WHO, HOW AND WHY OF REVIEWING POETRY
with Sarala Estruch, Pam Thompson, D. A. Prince, Lisa Kelly (Magma)
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Also Live-streamed
60min E18
04:30pm
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Ballroom Reading
UEA POETS - MA CREATIVE WRITING SHOWCASE
with Salma Yusuf, Vanessa Raison, Alice Bridgwood, Malavika S Udayan, Emily Veal, Shakiah K Johnson
60min E19
07:00pm
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Online Reading
‘WRITING WHERE WE ARE’ - FESTIVAL FINALE
with Gail McConnell, Padraig Regan, Jay Bernard, Stephen Sexton followed by weekend's work by festival artist Jessica Jane Charleston
75min E20