Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival turns ‘Weird and Wild’ for 2025

The full programme for Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2025 has now been announced, with the festival set to make a welcome return on April 25 and run until May 4.

Participating venues for this year’s festival  – which is themed ‘Weird and Wild’ – include Watershed, Arnolfini, St George’s, The Wardrobe Theatre, Loco Klub and Waterstones (Galleries), and there are a number of online events planned too.

Lyra is also behind the Bristol City Poet and Young City Poet schemes, and additional community poetry outreach projects through the year.

As an organisation, their aim is “to showcase poetry in the widest range of forms possible, including readings, slam competitions, film screenings, walking tours, digital media, panels, open mics, lectures and more”.

 

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Highlights of the festival programme are many and varied. They include a free-flow Creative Writing Breakfast Club with Laurie Bolger and The Poets Performance Lab day workshop with Apples and Snakes, as well as walking tours: Dr Edson Burton hosting Black Literary Bristol; The Isambards leading poetry loves around the waterfront; and a Coleridge and Wordsworth-themed stroll around the city with Dr Rebecca Hutcheon.

Pascale Petit explores “real and imaginary wildernesses” in a workshop that prefaces an evening of Wild Poems with herself, Fran Lock and Susie Wilson – each using the poetic voice to respond to the natural world.

Brian Bilston

Brian Bilston, aka ‘the Banksy of poetry’ will be reading from, and signing, his bestselling collections; Joelle Taylor headlines a queer poetry special, flanked by Oluwaseun Olayiwola and Ife Grillo, with an open mic for the local queer poetry community.

Hosted by Shawn Sobers with guests including Casey Bailey, Pauline Melville and family members, Dis Poetry: A Tribute to Benjamin Zephaniah will celebrate the legacy of one of the UK’s most beloved poets.

The former National Poet for Scotland, Jackie Kay will present an afternoon of poems, stories and lullabies aimed at children of 3-7, and their families. Deanna Rodger joins Maria Ferguson to share their work and discuss the poetry of motherhood.

Meanwhile Raise the Bar – the legendary local poetry and spoken producers, themselves subjects of a new exhibition at Arnolfini, will be hosting a typically “raucous, dynamic, thought-provoking and life-affirming” night at the gallery, headlined by Suhaiymah Manzoor Kahn.

Jackie Kay

T.S. Eliot Prize-winning Alice Oswald hosts a zoom workshop on Anonymity in Poetry, while Arielle Cottingham’s F*cking with Forms with bring in acting and dance techniques to physicalise performance poetry.

World Poetry Slam champion Harry Baker will be back, “celebrating wellies, postcodes, funerals and fertility journeys” – with incumbent Bristol City Poet Sukina Noor in support.

And to round off the festival, the grand finals of the Lyra Bristol Poetry Slam are sure to bear witness to some memorable moments, as a new victor is crowned.

All photos: Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival (main photo: Harry Baker)

Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival runs from April 25-May 4 at multiple central Bristol venues. For the full programme, festival passes and tickets to individual events, visit www.lyrafest.com.  

Raise the Bar: Poetry and Resistance, curated by Danny Carlo Pandolfi is at Gallery 5, Arnolfini until June 1. Find out more at www.arnolfini.org.uk.

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