An award-winning poet has been named as Ledbury Poetry Festival’s first guest curator.
Stephanie Sy-Quia has won an Eric Gregory Award, a Somerset Maugham Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection for her debut Amnion.
A writer and printmaker based in London, she is a Ledbury Poetry Critic.
Stephanie Sy-Quia said: “Ledbury is such a fantastic home for poetry, and I want people to leave at festival’s end and feel that poetry is a form that can be carried out with them, an invigorating force that belongs everywhere.
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“I also want to foster good relationships with many of the artists who live locally, and invite them into the process as a way of celebrating poetry as a form that leaps across many different disciplines.”
Chloe Garner, the festival’s artistic director, said: “I am thrilled to welcome the Forward Prize-winning poet and Ledbury critic Stephanie Sy-Quia as Ledbury Poetry Festival’s first ever guest curator.
“I can’t wait to see what fresh discoveries and possibilities she will present to audiences.”
Ledbury Poetry Festival, which enjoyed a bumper year in 2022, will return for a 10-day programme of events between June 30 and July 9.
As has become the norm in recent years, the festival will once again be a hybrid affair. Expect a wide range of in-person events to take place throughout the town, while the festival continues to reach out internationally online.
The full programme will be announced in April 2023.
Ledbury Poetry Critics
In 2017, Ledbury Poetry Critics launched its first year-long intensive mentorship programme, recruiting 12 critics of colour, and has been responsible for increasing the visibility of poets and critics of colour.
There are now more than 35 critics within the programme founded by Sandeep Parmar and Sarah Howe with support from Ledbury Poetry.
Ledbury Poetry Critics introduce and chair events at Ledbury Poetry Festival this year. Full information on the programme can be found here: www.ledburypoetry.org.uk/home/ledbury-poetry-critics
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