And we're off ...

A great start yesterday evening for the seventh Cheltenham Poetry Festival: Smokey Joes was full to bursting point for an event with a difference. Tyler Keevil and Mike Johnstone, two lecturers at the University of Gloucestershire, are themselves prose writers rather than poets but they brought along a number of students from various Creative Writing courses to read flash fiction inspired by poetry. From lines by Alice Walker, Jenny Joseph, Pablo Neruda, W. H. Auden, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson and many more came 150 word gems that moved to laughter, tears and reflection. The students put on a thoroughly good show.

The student readers

Preceding the students, we were treated to an amazing double act by Tyler and Mike. Having worked together for a decade, they are very familiar with each others writing and tailored readings from their novels into a seamless performance - in fact quite an electrifying one, as Anna Saunders, the Festival Director, remarked. I was interested to hear that Keevil's prose PhD had been supervised by a poet - and I'd say that poetic influence is definitely apparent in his writing.

Mike and Tyler

Day two sees an interactive poetry appreciation class, a workshop on list poems with Ben Parker and a reading by Ben and Matthew Sweeney this evening. Over the next ten days there's a tremendous variety of events in Cheltenham - if you are in the area, don't miss out on the opportunity to hear some really good poets and to have a very enjoyable time. There are still tickets available - do check the website and hope to see you here!