Saturday 26 May 2018

5th Festival of Suffolk Poetry

Colin Whyles, Festival Director on stage at the John Peel Centre, Stowmarket

We are just back from an eleven hour day at the 5th Festival of Suffolk Poetry. The day began for me with a workshop led by Rebecca Watts in which we were encouraged to make poetry collisions by bringing unlikely situations or characters together. If I say that one of my drafts began with Darwin, Lowry, the Great Fire of London and a horse, you will begin to get the picture...

The Suffolk Poetry Cafes took to the stage in the afternoon along with Creative Writing students from the sixth form college, One.

David and I both read in the Open Mic this year: my poem was inspired by a train ride we made from Philadelphia to New York back in 2012.

Philadelphia, Penn's Landing
The evening included readings by John Vaughan, Beth Soule, Susan Utting, Blake Morrison and Rebecca Watts. Having read Morrison's collection Shingle Street, named after the Suffolk coastal village of the same name some time ago, it was good to hear the poems read in the poet's voice.

Seal at Shingle Street

David watching seals at Shingle Street

Huge thanks to Colin, our Festival Director, and to all the Suffolk Poetry Society committee for their hard work. It was much appreciated by all of us.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Caroline,
We love this post on the festival of Suffolk poetry! It is so excellent to see poetry in action around the country and your poetry collision workshop sounds wonderful. We were wondering whether you could give us an email so we could contact you about our own poetry readings and future events? We are a small independent poetry press based in London.
Many thanks.

Caroline Gill said...

Dear 'Unknown', thank you for your comment. The best thing would be to contact Suffolk Poetry Society via the Facebook page, I think, stating who you are etc. You are very welcome to leave details here, too (or instead), and I will take a look and pass to the right folk.

https://www.facebook.com/SuffolkPoetrySociety/