A fairly full Saturday at the festival. We began with a morning reading by Harry Clifton

from his Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks – it was a set which included several lovely food poems and a gentle and intelligent humour; Imtiaz Dharker followed with performance-oriented work of which I most enjoyed her Bombay tiffin-carriers poem; and Elaine Feinstein who read from works including Talking to the Dead. She also managed to squeeze in one of her Marina Tsvetaeva translations.

After a quick sandwich in town, we hastened back to the hall to hear New Blood

which offered up three talented young poets: the confident and entertaining Caroline Bird; Jack Underwood and Luke Kennard. All young, all talented, what can you say but watch for more from them?

After a bit of workshopping ourselves, we had a good if slightly hasty supper at the Pelican (duck confit with red cabbage and parsnip mash was great)

and then back to Jubilee Hall,

packed to the rafters for an evening reading which commenced with my personal favourite, John Glenday

reading from his excellent new collection, Grain. We heard also from Dorianne Laux and Bernard Kops, and then repaired to the Cross Keys for a nightcap.

American poet Marie Howe thought it was pronounced Aydelburg, but as we all eventually learn it’s really Ohld-brah. The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival celebrates its 22nd birthday this year and – though like all arts organizations is struggling for survival in rocky times – has brought back the usual throng of poets and readers for a weekend by the sea.

We arrived early, in time to dine on sole from the local farm shop’s sustainable fish shop

and check out Tammy’s allotment, where even after a late planting the radishes were flourishing

likewise the raspberries

and apples

and sloes, begging for gin:

After some heavy poetry workshopping, we fortified ourselves at 152 (feta-pomegranate salad and beetroot risotto with a natty parmesan chapeau for me)

before taking in our first reading of the festival, where we heard J.O. Morgan, Matthew Caley and Don Paterson (who will be giving a lecture on Robert Frost as well).

Several poetry organizations were represented (the Poetry Society, the Poetry Book Society, the Poetry School, and the Poetry Foundation)

and the book tables at the back of the stage were thronged as ever. My bags grow heavier, my wallet lighter.

Spent yesterday morning in the shadow of Newton

at the British Library’s Business & IP (intellectual property) centre, attending a workshop on search engine optimization. It was a fairly fleeting visit, not allowing time to go and breathe the studious air of the reading rooms, but lovely to be there nonetheless. I had to rush off up the road to Islington to see Nancy and Mike, who had laid on a lovely spread of Ottolenghi treats, the better to catch up on our mutual travels. They’d been to the Torbay Festival of Poetry and, well, I hadn’t. But I’d been some other places we could talk about.

Then we all headed out to catch a bus, since it was a tube strike night, to get to the Southbank. Owing to all the extra road traffic, the bus ground to a halt and then chucked us all off early, so we walked along the Strand for a while and crossed over Waterloo Bridge with its admirable views of the Southbank, the Eye and Parliament.

Had it been light we might have taken a look at the Drop sculpture which I saw a couple of weeks ago.

But: it was dark, and we were there for a Poetry International reading, introduced by Simon Armitage, who’ll be in residence there for the next three years, seeing in the Poetry Parnassus project which aims to bring in 200+ poets, from all participating Olympics countries.

On this occasion we heard from six poets: Anne Carson (Canada), Kristiina Ehin (Estonia), Mimi Khalvati (UK/Iran), Bill Manhire (New Zealand), William Ospina (Colombia)

and Nii Parkes (UK/Ghana). Among my favourite readers in a very good evening were Anne Carson, reading from her gorgeous new collection, Nox; the amazing William Ospina, whose haunting works are sadly not available in English (but a small selection had been translated for the occasion); and Kristiina Ehin’s wildly entertaining reading which included some wedding songs: she warned us we’d find the melodies sad, and said this was because the idea is that if Estonian brides do not weep the night of their wedding, they will weep for all the years of their marriage.

And now for a picture of a nicely named street in Asti: