Interview with Adham Smart

by Ben Norris

This Saturday, Adham Smart is performing in one of Ledbury Poetry Festival’s “20 Minutes with…”slots; intimate sessions combining live readings and informal Q&As where up and coming poets showcase their work. I sat down to talk to Adham about his experiences as a successful student writer with the hope of siphoning some of his expertise and enthusiasm to catalyse the growing popularity of University of Birmingham’s own flourishing creative writing society, Writers’ Bloc.

Born in Egypt and educated predominantly in the UK (currently studying Georgian and Linguistics at School of Oriental and African Studies), Smart is the kind of man who cites learning foreign languages as a “hobby”, alongside writing poetry, which goes some way to explain his proficiency with words.

By the time he was 17, Adham Smart had won the Foyle Young Poets’ Award 3 times (in 2006, ’07 and ’09) and was commended once more, in 2008. But it wasn’t always like this. Apparently, “when I was young I used to tell my family that I hated poetry. Look how that turned out!”

BN: So, how did you go from being apparently apathetic to (or even fervently anti-) poetry to winning FYP 3 times?

AS: I suppose I used to think that I didn’t like poetry because I could never sit down with a book of poetry and read it like I could prose. I still can’t, really, but then, I don’t really think that’s the way to do it. I don’t think poetry collections are designed to be read from cover to cover, and that’s where I was going wrong. I still wrote poetry in school even though I claimed that I didn’t like it, and I enjoyed writing it, so I must’ve just been deluding myself.

BN: The pieces that won you the FYP are all markedly different. Do you feel like you’ve finally found what might euphemistically be called your “voice”, or do you think that writing style constantly evolves?

AS: If anything, I find that I’ve found my style to too great a degree – all my most recent poems sound exactly the same to me! I think there’s a fine line between finding your voice and getting stuck in a rut, which is why I think it’s good to write outside your comfort zone, whether that be by trying new ways of writing or choosing different things to write about. There are even certain words that I’ve banned myself from using because I find that they crop up in almost every poem I’ve ever written! Your style should mutate every now and then to keep your writing fresh, I think.

BN: As Literary Events Officer for Writers’ Bloc, I meet a lot of young writers with an abundance of talent and enthusiasm, but who are somewhat daunted by the world of publishing and/or live performance. What advice do you have for someone trying to make it in the world of C.21^st poetry, and what did you do to successfully get your work out there?

AS: The only advice I can give is probably the same advice as anyone reading this will have already heard: practice makes perfect, and spend lots of money on stamps. Keep writing, and show it to people whose opinions you respect, because they will tell you when you’ve written a stinker, and then submit submit submit. Stamps cost a lot nowadays and it uses up a lot of paper, but it’s the only way. Besides, there are also plenty of top-quality online poetry publications which are just as worthy of your time as any print magazine, and some are set up specifically for young people. I used to help run Pomegranate with other winners of the FYPA 2006 till about two years ago, when other things got in the way, and when I read poetry publications now, I come across names who were first seen on our site. Pomegranate’s in hibernation right now, but there’s still the excellent Cadaverine, and the Young Poets’ Network (not a publication per se, but an invaluable online resource for young writers with worksops and features, and they do publish some things). It’s definitely the case that once you’re published once, it’ll be easier to get published again, so go for it!

20 Minutes with Adham Smart is on Saturday 30^th June from 3:40-4:00 in the Shell House Gallery, Main Street, Ledbury. What’s more it’s free, but there are a limited number of seats, so make sure you book early to avoid disappointment.

Adham is also chairing the 2012 Foyle Winners’ Showcase earlier that day, from 12:45-1:45, in Burgage Hall…also free!

Get your tickets on http://www.poetry-festival.com/bookings.html or by calling 0845 458 1743

Bill Manhire and Kay Ryan by Chloe Garner

As a programmer when I pair two poets together it means I often end up reading their books at the same time as their event approaches. Without really meaning to I begin to view them as a couple! So I have spent time moving back and forth between the succinct and sculpted verses of Kay Ryan to some more rangey and seemingly less controlled poems of Bill Manhire. But then I remind myself that they are not an item and so I am determined to reflect on each, one at a time before they become too intertwined in my head!

Kay Ryan's poems are completely particular, by which I mean that although I am new to her work (and am since discovering how greatly and passionately she is revered by people who do know about her) I now feel I could recognise a Kay Ryan poem anywhere! As I read them they remind me of nursery rhymes. Why? Maybe because they do rhyme and they are playful! Also in the sense that they are so pointed and sharp and contain a sense of fable or myth and actually they do refer back to fairy stories, as in Glass Slippers. Failure is described as "the ribbons stalled approach, the helpless/ red-faced urgings of the coach." Such a brilliant image! I love New Clothes as well. I feel her sagely whispering in my ear when I read, "You will cast aside/ something you cherish/ when the tailors whisper,/ Only you could wear this."

Many of Bill Manhire's poems also grow out of stories, memories, myths, as in The God's Journey in his new collection Lifted. In one of my favourite lines, the puffs of dust of his cart come to resemble "the wings of birds". The poems are by turns humourous and absurd, then dark and monumental and feel truthful to human experience, what we mean to do and how we mean to live and then reality cracking open. "We want/ to sit by the shining lake yet settle/ under the surface of ourselves...secretly real.../ submerged." They play at revealing the crafting of the poem, with crossed out lines left in place so we sense the choices being made or not made or held for a long time in balance. Some poems are very moving as in The Ladder, "And, as you can see, it is rotten. Nevertheless, it longs to be lifted." As we all do. 

I am so excited to have discovered both these poets and am wholeheartedly anticipating their reading together on Friday 6 July at 6pm. 



   

Katherine Towers - 'The Floating Man'

Laced with music and writ-through with a kind of visceral nakedness and vulnerability that seems to be both literary and thematic yet entirely subconscious, The Floating Man is Katherine Towers’s exquisite debut collection. In it, she maps “the contrapuntal art of love” with breathtaking dexterity and simplicity. At times existential and abstract and elsewhere deeply personal and intimate, Towers is rarely anything other than sublime; in her tactile awareness of language, and in her succinctness. It is, in many ways, the epitome of poetry: startlingly precise, impossible to paraphrase and absolutely, unquestionably necessary.

She manages her free verse with deft sleight-of-hand, finding rhythm in the natural world, “the staggered iterative chant of the heart”, or the rise and fall of birdsong. Indeed, while much of the collection is concerned with music – conventional compositions and the musicality of everyday life – the poems are music in and of themselves.

If you have ever heard or felt something beautiful; ever loved or possess the capacity to love; ever existed in harmony with or fundamentally apart from the earth, then you should come and hear Katherine Towers read. If that seems a little vague and all-encompassing, it’s because everybody should come and hear Katherine Towers read. There is something within each poem that is universally relatable, just as the best songs have singable melodies even when the lyrics at first seem distant. With Towers, one listens again and again, replaying pieces to hear once more the different voices and ideas interweave effortlessly, alternately discordant and harmonious; and always simply right.

The Floating Man  is published by Picador.

Katherine Towers is appearing with Sean O’Brien on Saturday 30th June from 6-7pm in Ledbury’s Burgage Hall. O’Brien, thrice winner of the Forward Prize for best collection (Ghost Train, 1995; Downriver, 2001; The Drowned Book, 2007) and once for best single poem (Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright, 2006) needs little introduction. The two are also running the Northern Poetry Workshop, also on Saturday 30th June, from 10:30-12:30 in The Old Cottage Hospital.

Tickets for both events can be booked at http://www.poetry-festival.com/bookings.html or by calling Box Office on 0845 458 1743

by Ben Norris

Interview with Maitreyabandhu by Sarah Wright

In 2010 Maitreyabandhu won the Ledbury Poetry Prize for his poem ‘The Cutting’. This year, he will be performing poems from his pamphlet ‘The Bond’ at the festival. I took a few minutes to ask Maitreyabandhu a bit about the inspiration behind his poetry, and what we can expect to see from him at Ledbury this year.

When did you first discover a love for poetry? And what elements of the form particularly drew you towards it?

It wasn’t until I was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order 22 years ago that I really discovered poetry. I’d not done well at school, so I assumed poetry was beyond me. But a friend introduced me to Shelley. I was exhilarated. I went on to read all of Shelley, Keats, Dante… Of course I wrote poems all that time, especially on retreat (though my notebook jotting could hardly be called poems!) In 2005 I at least started typing my poems up. Then I got some encouragement from a poet friend, and I was off! Since then I’ve been writing intensively.

Your pamphlet, ‘The Bond’, was published last year. Was there a particular inspiration for the collection?

The poems from ‘The Bond’ are a result of my last seven years of serious writing. Looking back on it, the turning point was being awarded a place on the Arvon/ Jerwood mentoring scheme, with the wonderful Mimi Khalvati as my mentor. It was from her that I began to grasp of the craft of poetry (and the sheer hard work of it!). She taught me – in the deepest possible way – what ‘working on a poem’ means. I owe everything to her. 

Your poem, ‘The Cutting’ won the Ledbury Poetry Prize in 2010. Would you say that the poem is autobiographical?

As far as any poem can be, yes. But I’m not as interested in autobiographical writing as my pamphlet might suggest. I’m more interested in the place where personal history becomes something more akin to myth; where memory and story meet and suggest something beyond themselves. I especially relate this to meditation. In meditation I often have memories, which seem to have some sort of significance or resonance, some mythic outline almost. I start from there.

Childhood seems to be a recurring theme in many of your poems, and in ‘The Small boy and the Mouse’ you refer to a ‘kind of quiet’. What do you think can be gained from looking back on childhood experiences?

When I started writing seriously, I was determined not to write about my childhood. It’s too easy in a way, and after all how many poems about childhood do we need? But my childhood kept getting into the poems whether I liked it or not. It seems to me that childhood is the time when we are most vividly in touch with imagination and that we need to re-capture that vividness in our adult life, with fully adult consciousness – ‘to know the place for the first time ‘ as Eliot put it. When you think of it, so many poets seem to write well when they write about their childhood – Heaney for instance, or Wordsworth come to that!

In 2009 you won the Keats-Shelley prize. Do you believe that Keats or Shelley provided inspiration for any of your poetry?

Well, they’ve both given me tremendous inspiration in my life, my spiritual life as a Buddhist that is. I think Shelley is very close to being the greatest western Buddhist poet!  His vision is remarkably like the inner feeling of Buddhism. I’d love to be able to write with Shelly’s visionary uplift, but I can’t manage it. Keats to me is a great exempla of what Buddhist’s call ‘mindfulness’, and certainly I’ve tried to learn from that. They are poets for life not just poetry.

As an ordained member of the Triratna Buddhist Order, do you find that there is a connection between your spirituality and the poetry you write?

I hope all of my poems are expressions of my Buddhist practice. There are those that (for me at least) are explicitly Buddhist, and those that arise out of my Buddhist practice, especially my practice of mindfulness and meditation. But I hope they all (whether overtly Buddhist or not) express human qualities – such as awareness, sympathy, intelligence, honesty and so forth. It is those qualities that make my poems ‘Buddhist’ or ‘spiritual’. To the degree that I really am a Buddhist, it will naturally show in my work. I shouldn’t have to put it there.

What can the audience of your Twenty-minute reading at Ledbury this year expect from the event?

Not a monk in robes for a start off! What I hope the audience can expect is honest, well made poems. At least that’s what I’d like them to be: honest-to-goodness poems – no posturing, no obscurantism, no game-playing, no cleverness – just the poem itself in the right form. That’s what I hope. But it’s not up to me to judge if I’ve succeeded in doing that.

What plans do you have for the future of your poetry?

I’ve just heard that Neil Astley (Bloodaxe) has agreed to publish my first collection, The Crumb Road next year! You heard it here first ….The rest is just a matter of writing better stuff, and being some use in the world.

By Sarah Wright

Simon Armitage - 'Walking Home'

When it comes to poetry, Simon Armitage feels a bit like my dad. Or rather, my older brother, because you rarely revere your parents like you do an older sibling; they’re doing all the cool stuff, introducing you to new cool stuff, and making you jealous of all the cool stuff because you really want to do the cool stuff too. Poetry is, in this case, the cool stuff, but it wasn’t always. Until year 9 (aged 13/14) I was a proper little sh*t. My mum often joked, wearily, that I had my teenage tantrum years as an infant. She was playing it down a bit. My teenage tantrum years may well have begun in infancy, but they lasted right through to Christmas, year 9, and saw me get into all sorts of trouble at primary and secondary school. I can pinpoint almost to the week my big “why are you behaving like such a [insert choice expletive]“ epiphany, where I realised, not a moment too soon, that wasting my education, disappointing my parents, and lying to myself about a wealth of things wasn’t ever all that fun (o! adolescence).
Now, I’m not about to say that poetry saved my life. This isn’t going to be a gushy blog post. Well, it’s not supposed to be. After all, at this point Poetry Live! (a countrywide tour of the GCSE English-featured modern poets) wasn’t going to happen for another 2 years, and I did a lot of rethinking cool stuff in that time. No, it’s about why I like Simon Armitage, and why you should come and see him at Ledbury Poetry Festival on July 8th.
Poetry Live! remains the fullest I have ever seen Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall, at 2,294 capacity across its 4 tiers. It is also the most apathetic I have ever seen it, with kids about to sit their GCSEs finding anything and everything to distract them from the onstage action. Well, for some readers, Carol Ann Duffy included, unfortunately, ‘action’ is the wrong word (though her poetry is superb), but for Armitage, and the impossible-to-dislike John Agard, it was action through and through. Armitage was funny and friendly, telling risque anecdotes about how young people in his home town did a lot of their growing up in telephone boxes (piercing ears, losing virginity, etc., etc.), and other similar gems. He was also honest and moving, and these factors combined, sneaking up on me surreptitiously as they did, to plant a small seed of change. Because, at some point in the course of that afternoon, a sentence like this drifted through my mind: “You know, this poetry stuff’s alright.” Then I probably sat there feeling a little alien and vulnerable, as if at any moment someone might stand up and shout “Look, he’s privately quite enjoying himself, kill him!”
And here I am now, studying Creative Writing, working at Ledbury Poetry Festival, writing and performing (particularly poetry). Of course, it’s impossible to say how big a part Armitage at Poetry Live! played in this metamorphosis, but a part it did play.
I am by no means the authority on Armitage – he was a catalyst for my delving and discovering within poetry – but I remain a big fan. Of his many published books, I’ve read Kid, The Dead Sea Poems, Gig, and now Walking Home. His writing spans numerous genres, including poetry, translation, novels, essays, and travel-memoir. Walking Home, published this year and available to purchase from next month, falls into the latter category, and is a record of his attempt to walk the Penine Way “backwards”(i.e. North to South). While most people start in Edale and finish in Kirk Yetholm (actually, most fail or only aim to complete a tiny segment of the 256-mile route), Armitage wanted to arrive back in (and then slightly overshoot) Marsden in Yorkshire, his home town, the triumphant and symbolic culmination of a very challenging journey. He also wanted to give poetry readings along the way, in exchange for a bed and some grub, and any donations that the modest rural audiences wanted to give.
The book follows these travels with a troubadour and each day (walk + reading) is a chapter. At a little over 280 pages, the experience is documented thoroughly, with Armitage speaking snippets into a voice recorder during the day and transcribing them each night, sprawled among loose change and blister plasters on a stranger’s bed. At its worst, the book is a little adjective-heavy, with descriptions of the weather/view/path occasionally blurring into one another, but at it’s best Walking Home is everything I love about Armitage; funny and dry, and simultaneously very human, even vulnerable.
Whether he makes it home or not is not for me to say. What is for me to say, however, is this:
Simon Armitage’s Walking Home is on Sunday 8th July from 12:45 – 1:45 at Community Hall, Ledbury. Tickets are a mere 8 quid, and you can get them on http://www.poetry-festival.com/bookings.html or by calling 0845 458 1743.

by Ben Norris

Spotlight on Ledbury - Places We Love

Going for Gold: World Poetry and music to celebrate the Olympics is a first for Ledbury Poetry Festival! Never before have we had a world poetry event on this scale, bringing together 9 poets from countries as diverse and varied as North and South Korea, Cameroon, Romania, Afghanistan, Columbia, Eritrea, India and New Zealand.

And if you are coming to travel with us through two hours of poetic discovery and adventuring, I believe you need fortifying with equally wonderful food. One of Ledbury's best watering holes, Cafe Salvation is based alongside Posterity reclamation yard (which deserves a feature all of its own!) and it is one of my favourite places to hang out. Do make a visit while you are here for the Festival. It is a gorgeous cafe, carefully and lovingly decorated, with a great kids play area and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. So we are delighted that Helen has offered to supply us with gold-standard picnic supper boxes to help make this unique event especially memorable. In her own words, Helen's cooking "takes a modern approach to healthy food". The meals I have eaten there included a wonderful samphire dish (a new discovery for me) and scrumptious spicy patties, as well as turkey meatballs that inspired me to spend a day cooking up tons of meatballs of my own, which of course tasted totally different and not nearly as nice! 

For our event diners can choose from a meat or vegetarian option which will also include a selection of Salvation's famous salads - 4 Seed New Potato Salad (with fennel, cumin, mustard and black onion seed), Turlu Turlu ( a middle-eastern ratatouille), Herb and Red Pepper Cous Cous, Mixed Green Leaves and a Seasonal 'Slaw'.  Order your box by Friday the 29th June to avoid food envy!  £6 per box.  Please inform us of any specific dietary requirements.

Visit Helen's great blog to hear about the new menus and to find out more about her approach to all things foodie, culinary and generally yummy!http://cafesalvation.blogspot.co.uk/

Interview with Ros Barber

Hello! My name is Jenna and I am an intern for the festival this year. Part of my role is to help promote some of the events on this year's programme, so I recently interviewed Ros Barber. You can also read my blog post about Jane Hirshfield and Esther Morgan's appearances at Ledbury on my personal blog: http://jennaclake.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/ledbury-poetry-festival-jane-hirshfield-and-esther-morgan/

Ros Barber’s The Marlowe Papers has recently been published and has received positive reviews from the likes of Hilary Mantel and The Telegraph. On Saturday 7th July, Ros Barber will be bringing The Marlowe Papers to Ledbury, and on the following day will conduct her famous workshop, Be the Writer You Dream of Being.

The Marlowe Papers follows what would have happened to Christopher Marlowe had he not died his violent death, and works with the theory that Marlowe was, in fact, Shakespeare himself. And it’s all written in iambic pentameter.

All this seemed like a lot of work, so I knew that Ros Barber must have been, and still would be, passionate about Marlowe, so I asked her a few questions aboutThe Marlowe Papers, her methods of writing and what to expect from her at Ledbury.

The Marlowe Papers has been characterised as poetry, a novel or a mixture of both. How would you define it?

Like Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate or Bernardine Evaristo’s The Emperor’s Babe, it’s a novel in verse. The novel is made up of a hundred and thirty one poems, written as if they are the private letters or journal entries of Christopher Marlowe. But to people who baulk at the idea of a novel in verse, I tell them to forget it’s poetry and just think of it as a novel with shorter-than-average lines.

What research did you undertake when writing The Marlowe Papers?

I read and/or listened to every single play and poem in both the Marlowe and Shakespeare canons, including the apocrypha. I also read all the biographies of Marlowe that are available (including Charles Nicholl’s The Reckoning), and all the recent ones of Shakespeare. I read writing by Marlowe’s contemporaries (Thomas Nashe, Thomas Watson, Gabriel Harvey and many others). I read several contemporary verse novels and other Marlowe and Shakespeare fictions and factions: A Dead Man In Deptford, Tamburlaine Must Die, Nothing Like the Sun, Will In The World, History Play, 1599. I also read biographies of other key figures I would be writing about such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham, the Earl of Essex, etc. and an awful lot of academic articles pertaining to relevant subjects such as practices of execution and torture, legal procedures, civil and ecumenical law, fencing.

I read up on religion at that time, since I quickly understood that was at the heart of Marlowe’s downfall – not just Catholics and Protestants, but the Jesuits, the Puritans, the anti-Trinitarians, the Huguenots etc. Then there was the geographical research regarding Cambridge, Canterbury, Deptford, France, the Low Countries, Italy and London in the late sixteenth century. I’m sure the list could go on, but that gives you some idea of the scope of it.

Your other poetry has a clearly modern ‘voice’. Was writing in Marlowe’s voice and era a challenge?

Finding an authentic-sounding voice for Marlowe was probably the hardest part of starting out but it came easily once all the research was in place. Listening to the Shakespeare canon and reading the works of Marlowe aloud was particularly helpful, allowing me to pick up Elizabethan cadences and rhythms. But it was also important to me that I didn’t write in mock-Tudor language; it had to be contemporary English that would be easy on my readers, not the kind of alien, jolting experience that modern audiences have when first exposed to Shakespeare. I wanted to create a seamless, almost invisible bridge between the reader and an Elizabethan experience, allowing them to enter that world through familiar language. My aim was to balance a modern voice with authentically Elizabethan cadences and phrasing. The iambic pentameter helped with this a great deal; it would have been much harder to achieve in prose.

Not the Usual Grasses Singing was written entirely in rhyming couplets. Do you enjoy setting yourself challenges with form?

For me, it is one of the great pleasures of writing poetry. On the other hand, when you are writing something over the long haul – like Not the Usual Grasses or The Marlowe Papers – the form very quickly ceases to be a challenge; it comes easily and naturally and becomes a containment device, a structural pleasure, something to play with and enjoy as you’re going along. Iambic pentameter feels as natural as breathing; it is difficult for me, these days, not to write in iambic pentameter. In other words, writing a whole novel in blank verse wasn’t the challenge. The challenge was finding an authentic voice for Marlowe, and telling a complex tale as richly yet compactly as possible, in a way that was gripping, emotionally moving, and true to the historical record.

Did you set yourself certain tasks or have certain self-imposed constraints within The Marlowe Papers?

The chief self-imposed constraint was historical accuracy. Rodney Bolt’s History Play was a fictional biography of Marlowe based on the same theory but, reading it, I was irritated that he had felt the need to insert so many pretend facts among the real ones; I felt strongly that a plausible narrative could be woven using only the historical evidence we actually have. Obviously this historical evidence is then interpreted; that’s what novelists (and historians and biographers) do. But it was important to me that I had a sound historical basis for everything I wrote. Other than that, it was the usual imperatives incumbent upon any writer: don’t be boring – grip, move, involve – make sure all your characters have pulses, never use ten words when two will do.

What can one expect from The Marlowe Papers event at Ledbury?

I’ll be demonstrating the advantages of being married to a voice/drama/spoken word coach! Kidding aside, a lot of poets read their work very badly. I love poetry, yet more than half of the poetry readings I attend, I can’t wait for them to be over because the readings are so desperately dull. Something read well, on the other hand, will transport you. I think it’s important to properly engage and entertain the audience. I’ll be bringing a bit of an ‘audio book’ experience to Ledbury, reading extracts from The Marlowe Papers and bringing the words alive. If you want a flavour of the experience, go to rosbarber.com/themarlowepapers and watch the short video there.

You are also bringing ‘Be the Writer You Dream of Being’ to Ledbury this year. Despite being a very accomplished writer, do you still suffer with a lack of confidence?

Not at all! And largely thanks to the techniques I’ll be introducing in the ‘Be the Writer You Dream of Being’ workshop. I taught creative writing at Sussex for twelve years and it bothered me that I would bump into some of my most talented students, years after the course, and find that they were no longer writing. Confidence issues, limiting beliefs and fear (of failure, or success) were always at the heart of their self-sabotage. While I was writing The Marlowe Papers I had to face some major fears of my own: was I up to the task? Would it be rubbish? What if no one wanted to read it? What if no one published it? What if it was published but was torn apart in reviews? What if it didn’t even get reviews? And many more besides. These are the kinds of fears that can cripple any writer and prevent them achieving the successes they hope for. During the first year of writing The Marlowe Papers I was fortunate enough to find really effective techniques that not only neutralises fears, doubts and self-limiting beliefs, but allow you to tap into a powerful stream of inspiration at will. The success of The Marlowe Papers is the direct result of those techniques, which I now share with, and teach to, other writers.

What will people take from ‘Be the Writer you Dream of Being’?

People generally say they feel lighter and more relaxed about writing, more confident of their ability to write well and with ease, and to move forward with their writing. We’ll dismantle blocks and demonstrate how to tap directly into a stream of inspiration. People who attend this workshop will come out with first-hand experience of a great technique they can use to overcome any obstacle to writing (even, believe it or not, unsupportive family members!). It’s unlike any other workshop for writers, in that we won’t be doing creative exercises. But we will be unravelling the things that keep you from the kind of writing success you dream about. So bring a pen, paper, and an open mind.

Ros Barber is clearly passionate about her work, whether Marlowe, poetry or workshops. Her work is accessible, entertaining and her appearances at Ledbury will evidently be exciting and enlightening.

The Marlowe Papers event takes place on Saturday 7th July at 2.30pm – 3.30pm

Be the Writer You Dream of Being takes places on Sunday 8th July at 10.30am-12.30pm

If you want to know more about Ros Barber, go to: http://rosbarber.com/

You can also book tickets for her Ledbury events by visiting:

http://www.poetry-festival.com/bookings.html

or calling 0845 458 1743.

A full programme of events is also available online:

http://poetry-festival.com/calendar.html

Many thanks to Ros Barber for participating in the interview.

By Jenna Clake