1st Festival of Suffolk Poetry

31 May 2014

Luke Wright and Kate Foley headlined the 1st Festival of Suffolk Poetry at the John Peel Centre in Stowmarket.

The 1st Festival of Suffolk Poetry was a very full day, perhaps too full, but it was certainly a feast of high quality poetry.

Three morning workshops saw groups tackling the sonnet with James Knox Whittet, rhyme in all its forms with Cameron Hawke Smith and passion and politics with Kate Foley.

The afternoon brought together six of Suffolk”s Poetry Cafés, each giving a unique presentation of poetry.

The evening ran from the smooth delivery of James Knox Whittet to the high energy performance poetry of Luke Wright, embracing Kate Foley, Caroline Gilfillan and Florence Cox along the way and not forgetting Judith Wolton bringing seven poets on stage to read their contributions to Judith and Pam Job’s anthology on conflict “so too have the doves gone”.

Sideshows were the bookstall, piled high with books from Suffolk poets, the Quotes Quiz, which could have had more entries, but hopefully entertained some, and a wall of poetic quotes from and about Suffolk provided by the Bungay poetry group.

We hope we didn’t set the bar too high for future festivals – the general feeling being that there should be more.

Caroline Gill gives her perspective on the festival here.