Bristol Poetry Festival Report 2006

Bristol Poetry Festival 2006 was by common consensus the best, most enjoyable Bristol Poetry Festival to date.

       Over ten days in Bristol, the Poetry Festival aims to present a mix of local, national and international poets and performers, poetry readings and performance poetry, open mics, poetry workshops, seminars, talks and discussions. The Festival also provides an opportunity for poetry enthusiasts from Bristol, from around the UK and from around the world to meet and to socialise in Bristol.

       Attendance at Bristol Poetry Festival events continues to rise each year with more events sold out than ever before, and with interviews and readings on BBC Radio Bristol and Star Radio leading up to and during the Festival, upwards of 250,000 were touched by poetry in Bristol! 

       This year we were happy to welcome back the Arnolfini, after major refurbishment, as a venue for Bristol Poetry Festival events. Other venues included: Bristol Old Vic Studio, Calabash – Stokes Croft, St. Paul’s Learning Centre Cafe, Oppo Music Coffee House – Park Street, Single Parents Action Network - Easton, the Central Library, Halo Café Bar – Gloucester Rd, The Plough – Easton Rd, Circomedia – St. Paul’s Church, The Lansdown – Clifton Rd, Easton Community Centre.

Eight hundred people attended The John Betjeman Centenary Grand Celebration, in aid of the Parkinson’s Disease Society, at St. Mary’s Redcliffe Church.   

       Jacqueline Roshkani and Remi Tawose of In-a-Roots were Bristol Poetry Festival 2006 Poets in Residence. Their residency saw them leading workshops, hosting events and performing in a range of venues in St. Pauls and Easton.

       Bristol Poetry Festival 2006 featured a number of major award winning poets, including Carol Ann Duffy. No event at a Bristol Poetry Festival has ever sold out so quickly. Carol Ann  interspersed her selected reading of The Laughter of Stafford Girls’ High from Feminine Gospels with readings from The World’s Wife and Rapture, moving easily and seductively from humour to darker, more romantic and more sensual poetry then back again with consummate, commanding ease, leaving an inspired, happy and rapturously applauding audience.

        International poets reading and performing included Yang Lian from China, Brendan Kennelly and Caitriona O’Reilly from the Republic of Ireland, Gabeba Baderoon from South Africa, Jane Yeh and Jive Poetic both from the USA.

        Events at regular local Bristol venues including Acoustic Night at the Halo Café Bar, Poetry at The Lansdown in Clifton and Can Openers Poetry Cafe at Bristol Central Library were host to large, enthusiastic, celebratory audiences and committed open mic’ers, each had its own great atmosphere. These year round events help to form the bedrock of poetic endeavour in Bristol and offer regular opportunities to performers to share their work and hone their skills before warm and supportive and equally committed audiences.           

       The Three Nations Slam was as ever a diamond occasion hosted with style, panache and humour by Glenn Carmichael and Claire Williamson. Slam teams from Bristol, Cardiff and Edinburgh competed for the coveted team trophy and the individual top prize.The quality of both poetry and performance was particularly high this year. A very strong and excellent Edinburgh team went home with all the honours, Jenny Lindsay winning the individual title.

        Bristol based poets also shone brightly this year. Peter Hunter and David C Johnson presented their show, Tales From a Paralalia Universe, chronicling their journey in 2005 through the USA in search of poetry and America! The show featured superbly entertaining and evocative documentary film footage, and a guest performance from one of the star performance poets in the USA, Jive Poetic. Peter and David successfully blended poetry, performance, film, music and comedy to create a wonderfully entertaining and thought provoking show, and a huge audience at the Arnolfini were totally engaged from first moment to last. Standing ovation!

        Fiona Hamilton launched her brilliant new book Skinnandi on the final afternoon at an event that also included readings from the excellent Linda Lamus and the gorgeous UA Fanthorpe & Rose Bailey.

        Claire Williamson gave an absolutely outstanding and commanding performance as part of the Apples and Snakes Exposed Tour and showed just what an incredibly breathtaking poet and performer she is.

        The last night of Bristol Poetry Festival was, appropriately, a night of magic. Elizabeth Whyman from Newcastle was announced as the winner of the inaugural Poetry Can Poetry Competition. Elizabeth had come down from Newcastle for the event and read three of her winning poems. At next years Festival she will be reading from her first collection published by Poetry Can, which is the prize for winning the competition. Gabeba Baderoon from South Africa gave a beautiful and spellbinding reading, an ambassador of grace from the reinvigorated writing worlds of South Africa where nothing to do with the word is taken for granted . And then Brendan Kennelly gave what might have been the most accomplished, compelling, inspiring and moving reading I have ever witnessed, funny, emotive and visionary by turns, he demonstrated just why he is one of the most beloved and respected poets in his native Ireland.