friends scheme 2025
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Our Friends Scheme is a brand-new initiative for 2025 which gives our faithful and valued audience members an opportunity to support the inspiring new work we are devising.
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The festival is keen to expand, while continuing to run our November festival in Aldeburgh. To that end, we are keen to take poetry to parts of Suffolk it doesn’t otherwise reach. We are developing a new schools programme, sending poets into classrooms across the county to share our love of poetry with the next generation of readers and writers.
We are also organising outreach activities in other venues; in 2025 we hope to be collaborating with Suffolk Libraries on a series of readings and workshops to happen in the run-up to the festival weekend, bringing poetry to their users in local branches. We are also working with some of the most innovative local artists and photographers to join poetry with other creative practices.
This is an exciting time for us, as we consider ways of growing the festival, and we invite you to be part of it. You can become a Friend for a minimum donation of £50 (on which we can claim gift aid where eligible). For your donation:
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You will receive priority booking for a Festival Pass (now on sale to Friends). The Pass, which is £85, represents incredible value and gives access to all events held in Jubilee Hall - our main Festival venue - during the Festival. Workshops, other events in the Courtyard Gallery and festival walks are bookable separately once Festival general booking opens.
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We will list you as one of our sponsors, in both print and online programmes
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You will have the opportunity (for an additional £10) to join one or more exclusive online workshops of your choice in July 2025, subject to availability.
To become a Friend for 2025 click here
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Having become a Friend, you can book (using the access code that will be emailed to you)
one Festival Pass here. The 2025 programme is not yet finalised, but featured poets can be seen on the home page of this website.
and book your online workshops below
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‘Mining Lines’ with Jacqueline Saphra and Tamar Yoseloff (13 July, 1030 - 1200)
Does the use of another poet's words welcome a response or conversation, does it add another texture to the poem or an additional voice? In this workshop, we will consider the impact of intertextual devices in a poem, specifically borrowing lines from other poets and incorporating them into your own drafts – either as title, epigraph, or within the weave of your lines. We will look at examples of poems that embrace their borrowed texts, and also invite you to bring a line to the session with a view to using it as a springboard for a new piece.
‘The Poem of the Book’ with Susannah Hart and Paul Stephenson (20 July, 1030 - 1200)
Do you have a favourite book you want to make the subject of a poem? This workshop will explore poems that are in dialogue with literature, and how poets bring in their favourite authors. From the classics to the contemporary, we'll look at how poets explore their relationship with the novel and their authors. Homage, dialogue or exploration, we'll see how prose becomes the subject of poetry and discuss the significance of particular novels for you.
‘The Longer Take: on writing the book length poem’ with Rishi Dastidar and Fiona Moore (27 July, 1030 - 1200)
Whether it's cantos that need to be chained together, a stanza that doesn’t know its bounds, or a story that has to be told in verse, the poem that wants to be a whole book is a special challenge for any writer to take on. Join Fiona Moore and Rishi Dastidar, who have both written book-length poems, for insights into the whys and hows of undertaking such a creative endeavour.
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Frequently asked questions and answers about the Friends scheme are here.
If you are a UK taxpayer, the value of your Friends Membership donation can be increased by 25% under the Gift Aid scheme at no extra cost to you. To gift aid your donation click here.
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For any question about the Friends scheme, please write to admin@poetryinaldeburgh.org
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