Newcastle Poetry Festival
The Newcastle Poetry Festival was established in 2015 by Professor Linda Anderson of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA).
About Newcastle Poetry Festival
The Newcastle Poetry Festival was established in 2015 by Professor Linda Anderson of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts. The aim of the Festival is to bring national and international poets, as well as exhibitions, musical collaborations, films and artworks, to Newcastle. The Festival is also committed to using poetry to create inclusive spaces and build opportunities for those in our local communities.
Since 2015, the Newcastle Poetry Festival has been a fixture in the UK’s literary landscape. The first Festival in 2015 was the culmination of a The Poetics of the Archive, a project exploring the Bloodaxe Archive. In 2016, the Festival hosted commissions at the Ex-Libris Gallery and panels on Poetry and Urban Regeneration. Subsequent festival themes include ‘In Time: 2017’, which explored poetry in relation to current events, technology and language; ‘Crossings: 2018’, which focused on cross-genre collaborations; ‘Transformations: 2018’, an exploration of poetic practice; and ‘Emergency 2022’ which discussed poetry in relation to the global pandemic. The most recent festival ‘Community: 2023’ explored the power of collectives to inspire creativity.
Our Festival provides a range of events, including the Northern Poetry Symposium (in partnership with the Poetry Book Society), musical collaborations, workshops, lectures, readings and panel discussions and our event for schools, Poetry Live. We have also launched poetry apps, sound and art installations, and commissioned poems on art, music, and the environment from students and the local writing community. Since 2022, we have also been a hybrid Festival by live-streaming and captioning our event.
Over the years, the Festival has hosted an array of national and international voices, including Carolyn Forché, Patricia Smith, Jericho Brown, Mary Ruefle, Terrance Hayes and Valzhyna Mort. We have also hosted UK Poet Laurates and Scots Makars such as Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay and Kathleen Jamie.
We have been generously supported from Newcastle University, Arts Council England, the Catherine Cookson Charitable Trust, Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice, Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute and the Golsoncott Foundation. We’ve also had partnerships with Northern Stage, Poetry Book Society, The Poetry School, the Institute of English Studies, the T.S, Eliot Foundation, High Commission of Canada to the UK, Poetry Translation Centre, and the Lannan Centre for Poetics and Social Practice.
The Festival is currently organized by Theresa Muñoz, James Annesley, Linda Anderson, Melanie Birch, Alice Mullen of the Poetry Book Society and Imtiaz Dharker of Poetry Live. More information can be found on their website.
