Ledbury Poetry Festival

27th June – 6th July 2025

Ledbury Poetry Festival is delighted to announce Paul Muldoon as Poet in Residence.

We’re excited to announce Paul Muldoon, Professor of Poetry at Princeton University and Poetry Editor at The New Yorker, as Poet in Residence at the Festival. As well as mainstage readings and conversations on the publication of his new collection Joy in Service on Rue Tagore (faber), Paul will be running a series of small group workshops.

Jackie Kay, former Makar of Scotland, will open the Festival with a reading from her new collection May Day (Picador) casting an eye of several decades of political activism.

A.E. Stallings, Oxford Professor of Poetry, combines classical allusion and form with contemporary themes and wit. She will read from her work including This Afterlife (Carcanet) and talk with The Telegraph Poetry Editor, Tristram Fane Saunders.

Liz Berry, winner of the 2024 Writer’s Prize for Home Child (Vintage), a novel in verse inspired by the story of her great aunt sent to Canada to work as indentured servants, gives a performance accompanied on fiddle by Ruth Angell.

Imtiaz Dharker, winner of the Queen’s Medal for Poetry presents her new collection Shadow Reader (Bloodaxe Books) with artist Clae Eastgate and will also share an “in conversation” event with Paul Muldoon.

Fleur Adcock, winner of the Queen’s Medal for Poetry, celebrated her 90th birthday with the publication of her Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books). Her poised and ironic poems are known for their dry wit.

Zaffar Kunial’s debut collection Us (faber) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. His latest collection England’s Green (faber) won the Ledbury Hellens Poetry Prize in 2023. And to round off the Festival, Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, gives a reading from Blossomise (faber), celebrating and lamenting the fizz and froth of the annual arrival of spring and this nervous marker of our vulnerable climate. Book tickets from : www.ledburypoetry.org.uk

The full programme can be found online at www.ledburypoetry.org.uk where you can also sign up to the mailing list to ensure you get all the latest news.