The annual Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival is set to return on Thursday the 15th of April, taking on a fresh form in its new, online adaptation.
Taking place online from Thursday the 15th to Sunday the 18th of April 2021, the fourth annual Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival presents a vibrant, jam-packed programme for audiences to enjoy at home. Moving online presents an opportunity for the festival to broaden its horizons; Seren have expanded their programme to include twenty-three varied, diverse and imaginative events across four days. Registration is open now and all performances (excluding workshops) will be free of charge.
A plethora of exciting talent is to be offered by the festival: Benjamin Zephaniah will share his Desert Island Poems with Welsh poet Rhian Edwards, Cerys Matthews will present her new poetry/music crossover album We Come From the Sun, and there will be readings from poetry stars including Tishani Doshi, Joe Dunthorne, Pascale Petit, Patience Agbabi, Katrina Naomi and Kim Moore.
Although performers will be tuning in from all over the world, the festival programme also stays true to its roots with numerous events showcasing the fantastic literary culture we have here in Wales. In the annual Meic Stephens Lecture, Professor M. Wynn Thomas will discuss his book The History of Wales in Twelve Poems with poet Gwyneth Lewis, while Poetry Wales returns with various guest readers featured in the magazine.
Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival will be showcasing emerging new voices from Wales including Natalie Ann Holborow, Mari Ellis Dunning, Abeer Ameer and Alex Wharton, as well as more familiar artists such as Paul Henry and Brian Briggs (of Stornoway) performing their poetry/music collaboration, Cave Songs. Christopher Meredith is launching both his novel Please and poetry collection Still, whose publication side by side on the same day is a rare, if not unique, publishing event.
Renowned Welsh-language poets Mererid Hopwood and Menna Elfyn expand the narrow walls of lockdown through poetry from their own rooms on either side of the river Tywi. The session will be in Welsh with live English translation, while the words of the poems appear on screen as an aid for learners. There will be dual-language readings from Troeon : Turnings, a Welsh/English collaboration between Philip Gross, Cyril Jones and artist Valerie Coffin Price; and Let Me Tell You What I Saw, an Arabic/English translation of Adnan Al-Sayegh’s epic poem Uruk’s Anthem translated by Jenny Lewis.
Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival aims to be as accessible and inclusive as possible by offering live captioning, making poems available as text, and having audio description of images. Several events will also be accompanied by sign language interpretation.
For more information about the festival, featured events or authors, visit the Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival website here or contact poetryfestival@serenbooks.com.
