Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival announces programme for 2022

The Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival, organised by independent publisher Seren, is back, running from Friday 29 th to Sunday 31 st July 2022. After a successful online event in 2021, the festival is going hybrid with a range of events taking place in person at The Atrium and being streamed online.

The 2022 programme, curated by Seren’s new poetry editors Rhian Edwards and Zoë Brigley, is centred on the theme of wellbeing. It includes workshops on mindfulness, meditation, and therapeutic writing, discussions on empowerment, grief and the climate emergency, and explores how poetry can help us take care of ourselves in today’s busy and complicated world. There are plenty of poetry readings too, with a particular focus on authors published during the pandemic. A free online event ‘Poetry & Lockdown’ on the 20 th July will see poets Daniel Sluman, Mab Jones, Hannah Hodgson and Polly Atkin question what wellness has meant to them in times of isolation and illness, and how it relates to creativity.

The festival is delighted to feature appearances by leading poets like Kim Moore, Sascha Akhtar, Ben Wilkinson, Eric Ngalle Charles, Robert Minnhinnick, Hannah Hodgson, Sarona Abuaker, André Mangeot, Peter Finch, Isabelle Baafi and many more. There are also three headline events: ‘Desert Island Poems’ with Leanne Wood, the First Thursday showcase presented by former festival director Amy Wack, and a concert by Welsh musician Kizzy Crawford.

This year’s programme also features a number of Welsh language and bilingual events. Siân Melangell Dafydd will be running two Welsh language workshops, Angela Graham will chair ‘Barddoniaeth a Noddfa’ a bilingual panel discussion on Poetry and Sanctuary, and Kizzy Crawford will close the weekend with a bilingual concert in Welsh and English.

Pre-festival, during the week beginning 11 th July, we’re hosting three online workshops for teachers led by award-winning poet Jonathan Edwards, Connor Allen, Wales’s current Children’s Laureate, and a session in Welsh with former Bardd Plant Cymru Eurig Salisbury. These sessions will focus on creative and fun ways to teach poetry to children of all ages, and help maintain their wellbeing.

During the festival weekend, there are many ways to be part of the audience. All of our in person events (apart from workshops) will be streamed live on the Welsh content platform amam.cymru, produced by Culture Colony. An online pass gives access to the stream for all three days so that you can dip in and out as you please. We’re also excited to announce that Welsh charity Daring to Dream will be our 2022 charity partner. Daring to Dream supports the emotional health and wellbeing of patients living under the care of hospital clinics across Wales. They will be around at the festival talking about their work and how poetry, and writing, can play a key role in boosting emotional wellbeing. We will also be donating all proceeds from the sale of Leanne Wood’s Desert Island Poems pamphlet to the charity.

Tickets for the festival are on sale now and the full programme can be found on the Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival website https://cardiffpoetryfestival.com/programme/. As well as tickets for individual events, there are options for Day and Weekend passes which are perfect for longer trips.

The festival would like to thank our sponsors the Rhys Davies Trust, Literature Wales and our creative partners AM and Culture Colony for helping to make the festival possible. If you would like to become a festival volunteer, please get in touch through our website
https://cardiffpoetryfestival.com/become-a-festival-volunteer/.