The first Ledbury Poetry Festival was held in 1997 in
Ledbury,
Herefordshire. It was opened by jazz singer, critic and writer
George Melly. The following year it was opened by
Mark Fisher, the
Labour arts minister. Since then, over a thousand national and international poets have taken part in the festival. Patrons include the
Poet Laureate,
Carol Ann Duffy, and
Peter Florence, founder of the
Hay Festival. Trustees include
Ursula Owen, publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression, and
Neil Astley, editor of
Bloodaxe Books. The original trustees of the festival were Peter Arscott, John Burns, Alan Lloyd, Martyn Moxley, Richard Surman and Margaret Rigby. Ledbury holds its main programme over two weeks in the summer, and its work continues throughout the year, with projects that involve local primary schools and
John Masefield High School, as well as hundreds of local people through its community projects. The Festival also works alongside small literary publishers. In 2009,
The Guardian described the Ledbury Poetry Festival as "the largest of its kind in the UK and also the most energised, giving a real sense of poetry as an important living, contemporary literary form." In 2017 the Ledbury Poetry Festival celebrated its 21st anniversary by launching the biannual Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collections, the only prize of this kind in the UK. This prize aims to support and encourage poets at the ‘mid-career’ stage with a prize of £5,000 for the winning second collection. == Support ==