Lynn Lit Fests: Next Festival

Next: The 24th Poetry Festival 26th - 28th September 2008

The Poetry Festival has a new venue this year: the historic Green Quay on King's Lynn's riverside (just a few doors up from the old venue, Thoresby College). The weekend's programme can be found below (click here for a printable version).

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The potted biographies of the visiting poets are on this page too, beneath the "Weekend at a glance" box. The "more info" link will take you to their publisher's website.
For more information on the Green Quay, click here.

As usual, we hope the differing experience and genres presents an interesting mix of poets.

During the session's interval, enjoy some refreshments while you browse the bookstall of works by the Festival's writers - all of whom are happy to chat and sign their books.

The Weekend At A Glance
Friday 26th September 7.30pm Robert Crawford Helen Ivory Alan Jenkins ____________________	Sunday 28th September 11.00am Which poets since 1945 will still be read in 2083? The panel of writers will each select five poets and read from some of them to choose a definitive list with help from the audience. ____________________
Saturday 27th September 11.00am Discussion "Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy of the human race" (Henry Miller) What provides the grounding for 20th and 21st Century writers? The panel of writers will discuss the subject with Chairman Michael Hulse. ____________________	Sunday 28th September 3.00pm Piers Alexander Louis de Bernières Will Stone Paul Stubbs ____________________
Saturday 27th September 3.00pm Soleϊman Adel Guémar Lorna Thorpe Jackie Wills ____________________	The afternoon closes with The Draw for our unique raffle prize - a book handwritten by all the writers in the Festival.
Saturday 27th September 8.00pm Ruth Fainlight Alan Sillitoe Elizabeth Smither

(For a printable version of this "Weekend At A Glance" programme, click here.)

	Ruth Fainlight Saturday 27th, 8.00pm Born 1931 in New York to European Jewish parents. She moved to England in 1946. Since 1966 she has published 16 books of poems, including “Sugar Paper Blue” (1997 shortlisted Whitbread Poetry Award) and most recently “Moon Wheels” (2006). The Jewish historical
experience is the subject of much of her work, especially the holocaust. Ruth has written short stories, some of which were collected in “Dr Clock's Last Case“ (1994). “Her voice can be cutting as well as lyrical” (Helen Dunmore). Her libretto, “The Dancer Hotoke” (1991) was shortlisted for the Laurence Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in opera. (more info)

Alan Jenkins Friday 26th, 7.30pm Born 1955 in Surrey. University of Sussex. Since 1981, he has been Fiction and Poetry Editor of the Times Literary Supplement, then Deputy Editor. He has also been Poetry Critic for The Observer and Independent on Sunday. His seven books of poetry include “Harm” (1994
Forward Best Collection of the Year Poetry Prize), “The Drift” (2000 shortlist T S Eliot prize), “A Shorter Life” (2005 shortlist for the Forward Poetry Prize). Alan received an Eric Gregory Award (1981) and a Cholmondeley Award (2006). He previously attended our festival in 1989 and 1994. (more info)

Paul Stubbs
Sunday 28th, 3.00pm

Born Norwich, where he now lives. He left school at 16 and worked at various things around the country before starting to write. Paul has completed two collections, “The Theological Museum” (2005), which was introduced by Alice Oswald who wrote of his disregard of

"anything that smacks of poetical correctness”, and “The Icon Maker” (2008). In 2002 he was one of 37 British poets commissioned by The Globe Theatre to write a poem to commemorate the bicentenary of Wordsworth’s sonnet, “On Westminster Bridge”. Paul has written translations of two classical Greek plays, Euripedes’ “The Bacchae” and Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Unbound”. He is working on a book of poems based on the paintings of Francis Bacon.

Soleϊman Adel Guémar
Saturday 27th, 3.00pm

Born 1963 Algiers, shortly after independence and grew up during a time of crimes against humanity which attended the early years of independence and the enduring “state of emergency" which has blighted life there ever since. After two years working in publishing, he

returned to Algiers in 1991 in order to work as a journalist. Besides reporting on corruption and human rights’ abuses, he won two national poetry prizes and published numerous stories. His poems appeared in the Parisian magazine "Algérie Literature Action” in 2002. By the end of that year, Soleϊman Adel Guémar had to leave Algeria to seek safety for himself and his family in the UK, following assaults, the ransacking of his house and destruction of his work. “State of Emergency” (2007) shows his work in the original French, with English translation. (more info)

	Helen Ivory Friday 26th, 7.30pm Born 1969 Luton and lives in Norwich. She graduated from Norwich School of Art. She has published two collections with Bloodaxe, “The Double Life of Clocks” (2002) and “The Dog in the Sky” (2006). She won an Eric Gregory Award (1999) and received an Arts Council
bursary (2005). After a variety of employment which included working on building sites and with thousands of free- range hens, Helen is now Academic Director and teaches Creative Writing for Continuing Education at the University of East Anglia. (more info)

Lorna Thorpe Saturday 27th, 3.00pm Poet, short story writer, novelist and feature writer whose work has been published in the Guardian weekend magazine. She is a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing Course. "Dancing to Motown” (2005) was awarded the Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice.
Her first collection from Arc, “A Ghost in my House” (2008) is “brimming with sexuality, conflict and defiance… she overrides convention and manners with these poems – they simply don’t behave” (Linda Chase). Lorna has received two writing grants from the Arts Council. (more info)

Elizabeth Smither
Saturday 27th, 8.00pm

Elizabeth Smither was named New Zealand Poet Laureate in 2002. Born in 1941 in New Plymouth and best known as a poet, she has also written four novels of which “The Sea Between Us” (2003) was a finalist in the Fiction Category of the Montana Book Awards, five

collections of short stories, children’s books, an autobiography and she has worked as a journalist. Elizabeth has published 13 books of poems since 1975, including “A Pattern of Marching” (1990 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry) and “A Lark Quartet” (2000 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry). The Oxford Companion to NZ literature mentions the strand of Catholicism that runs through her work, and also the short poem, usually, but not always, unrhymed, witty, stylish and intellectually curious. She has received many awards. (more info)

Robert Crawford
Friday 26th, 7.30pm

Born 1959 in Lanarkshire. Poet and Critic. He works as Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews. He has published six full collections of poems since 1990, the most recent being “Full Volume” (2008). He was chosen as one of the Poetry

Society’s twenty New Generation Poets in 1994. Robert has twice received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and an Eric Gregory Award in 1988. He was included in Penguin Modern Poets in 1996. Robert's poetry is “intensely Scottish” (Peter Forbes) and manages to be both humorous and academic. He has written about contemporary Scottish writers, including Edwin Morgan, Douglas Dunn and Alisdair Gray, besides Robbie Burns.
He was previously at our Festival in 1997 and 2003. (more info)

	Will Stone Sunday 28th, 3.00pm Born 1966. Poet and Translator. Lives on the Suffolk coast. MA in Literary Translation from UEA. From his passion for French and Belgian literature has come translations of Gerard de Nerval, Baudelaire and the Belgium symbolist writers, Rodenbach and Verhaeren (to be
published next year). At our 2005 Festival, he read from the translations of Selected Poems of Georg Trakl, “To the Silenced”. Will returns this year to mark the publication of his first full collection, “Glaciation”. (more info)

Jackie Wills Saturday 27th, 3.00pm Born 1955. Poet and journalist living in Brighton. She has published four collections, her first, "Powder Tower”, (1995 shortlisted for T S Eliot award and Poetry Book Society recommendation). “They invite the reader to continue their dreamwork” (Moniza Alvi),
“Party” (2000), “Fever Tree” (2003) and “Commandments” (2007). She was Poet in Residence at the 2004 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. In the same year, Mslexia named Jackie as one of the Top 10 New Women Poets of the decade. Previously at our Festival in 1997, 2000 and 2003. (more info)

Louis de Bernières
Sunday 28th, 3.00pm

Born 1954. Grew up in the Middle East. Educated Bradfield and Manchester University. After four disastrous months in the British Army, he went to Columbia to work as a teacher in the morning and a cowboy in the afternoon. His interest in writing came initially from his parents:

His father wrote a poem for him and each of his siblings. He has spoken of his wish to write coming from “Wanting to be like my father”. He has written six novels, short stories and a play for voices. The novels include “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” (1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), which was made into a film. “Birds without Wings” (2004 shortlisted for Whitbread Prize for Novels and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize). “A Partisan’s Daughter” (2008) set in North London. Louis has appeared at many poetry festivals and in March 2007 said, “One of these days I ought to get a collection of poetry together”. He lives in Norfolk. (more info)

Piers Alexander
Sunday 28th, 3.00pm

Born 1924 Eltham. Educated Bradfield and Sandhurst. He was commissioned
into the Queen's Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards) and joined his regiment in 1943.
He served in the Italian Campaign and was mentioned in despatches.

After post-war service in Europe and the Middle East, Piers retired in 1959. He has published
one book of poems, "Golden Apples”, at the age of 84 at the behest of his son (Louis de Bernières).

Alan Sillitoe
Saturday 27th, 8.00pm

Born 1928 Nottingham. He left school at 14. Served as an RAF wireless operator in Malaya, then spent 18 months in hospital suffering from TB. Between 1952 and '58, he travelled in France and Spain with Ruth Fainlight, whom he married in 1959.

He was encouraged to write by Robert Graves, whom he met in Majorca, and by Ted Hughes, with whom he collaborated in 1971. Although best known as a prose writer for his novel “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (1958), and “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1959), Alan's first published book was the first of his 14 volumes of poetry, “Without Beer or Bread” (1957). This was followed by “The Rats and other Poems” (1960) and “A Falling out of Love and other Poems” (1964). In 1993, his “Collected Poems” showed poetry was an essential, if underrated, part of his writing. (more info)