Swindon Festival of Poetry – exciting, exciting!

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Sitting on a chair after the launch speeches and fiddling (as usual) with my camera, co-organiser of the very first Swindon Festival of Poetry, Matt Holland, gave my back a friendly rub, cracked a massive grin and said: ‘It’s exciting, exciting!’

And so it is.

A year or so after announcing to about 5 people on Facebook that Swindon is the Poetry Capital of the World, Google – no less – has now got with the programme. So if you Google search for Poetry Capital of the World, Swindon is what comes up. I kid you not. Try it for yourself.

Unfortunately the same engine does not yield the official festival website so here it is http://swindonfestivalofpoetry.co.uk/

So, the festival runs from Thursday 4 – Tuesday 9 October, with twenty-one events in all. A pretty good mix of open mic, celebrity poets (Pam Ayres), poetry readings, workshops, themed poetry plus music and poetry of the hip-hop variety. And a poetry tour bus from festival organisers Hilda and Michael in their Mabel and Barry ‘bad teeth’ Dicks personas.

Us Festival Chroniclers will be there, of course, in our official capacity. We covered the Swindon Festival of Literature from whose fertile loins this new festival sprang so it seemed rude not to cover this one.

And judging by the volume of smiling poetry fans who turned up to Swindon Library for the midday weekday launch, Matt’s not the only one to think ‘exciting, exciting!’ of Swindon’s new poetic foray.

Tags: poems, poet, poetry, poetry workshop, spoken word, Swindon, Swindon Central Library, Swindon Festival of Poetry