Last weekend was the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. My husband and I had been planning a trip to Suffolk for over a year and the festival gave the perfect motivation to go. Whilst I was at the Festival primarily as a lover of poetry, I was also there as a member of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival team. Aldeburgh, like Cheltenham, is run by volunteers, so I was making mental notes as to what worked and what didn't.
On the Friday we only went to the evening event a storytelling session led by Martin Shaw, having spent the rest of the day at Thorpeness, Snape and Sutton Hoo (more of that in a future blogpost). Shaw was a revelation, he kept the audience rapt with his retelling of two folktales. On Saturday I dedicated myself to poetry, while my husband visited churches and villages for his English Buildings Blog before rejoining me for the evening reading. On Sunday we went together to two back-to-back readings before heading off to our B and B exhausted.
This is the first time I have so intensively attended a poetry festival and it won't be my last. I really enjoyed it, but it takes some stamina! I listened to four hours of poetry on the Saturday plus taking part in the Paint me a Poem workshop led by the excellent Grace Nichols. When I was to organize training and conferences professionally I learned that the maximum length of time someone can listen in one session was 45 minutes and that was for much younger brains than mine.
The structure of the readings at Aldeburgh helped keep my concentration by having (with the exception of Martin Shaw's storytelling session on Friday more a theatrical experience that a poetry reading) multiple readers for each one-hour session. In the Carcanet 50th anniversary celebration there were six poets, but most sessions there were three. The festival was programmed to allow a 30-minute break between readings, which was good allowing me to stretch my legs, visit the loo and peruse the bookstall, but not enough to allow for buying and drinking a coffee.
But what about the poetry I hear you say. There were usually two readings and a workshop going on at the same time, so inevitably I was unable to get to everything I wanted to, but it was great to be spoiled for choice. The highlights for me were the workshop, Carmen Bugan's amazing poetry, Alison Brackenbury, Martin Shaw, Kaddy Benyon, Sean Hewitt and young poet, Jamie Osborn. The last three were poets whose work I was unfamiliar with.
We drove back on Monday and had the added pleasure of conversing with Alison Brackenbury as we did so.
