
Welcome to Winchester Poetry Festival
Winchester Poetry Festival - 10-12 October 2025





at Winchester School of Art​
FREE
Game Poems
Drop-in with Jordan Magnuson
Sunday 5th October
10am - 4pm
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Can videogames be poems? Come to the Winchester School of Art and find out! Experimental game designer and new media poet Jordan Magnuson curates an innovative collection of small, poetic videogames that anyone can play and enjoy. Presented in collaboration with University of Southampton.
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You may drop in at any time throughout the session.
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At 11:30 Jordan Magnuson will deliver a short explanatory introduction: "What Are Lyric Games and Game Poems?"
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Jordan Magnuson is an experimental game designer and new media poet, and a senior lecturer in WSA's Games Design and Art programme. He is author of the book, Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice, and founding editor of the Game Poems magazine.
Suitable for: all ages and abilities
Duration: 6 hours.
Format: drop-in session, poetry video games
Access: Requires the ability to push buttons on a keyboard or controller, but no gaming skills are necessary.

Online - via Zoom​
£20
Mining The Classics
Online workshop with Julia Copus
Monday 6th October
6.30 - 8:30pm
Classic poems can provide an exciting stimulus for new work, and open up new ways of thinking. Join award-winning poet Julia Copus for a playful and informative workshop exploring the various approaches that can be used to rethink, refresh and respond to the classics.
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There’ll be examples from some of our most gifted poets and exercises to kindle new work – with a special focus on the cento, a patchwork of poem fragments whose use stretches back to Classical times themselves. Bring an open mind!
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Julia Copus has published four collections of poetry. Girlhood (Faber 2019) was winner of America’s inaugural Derek Walcott Prize. She has tutored poetry courses for Oxford University and the Arvon Foundation, and currently teaches for the Faber Academy. Julia is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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This workshop will take place online only.
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Suitable for: all
Duration: 2 hours (including short break)
Format: online
Access: subtitles available

at Railway Inn​
FREE
Poetry Platform x WPF25
Open Mic and guest poet Hilary Davies
Tuesday 7th October
7 - 10:30pm
Winchester Poetry Festival presents Winchester Poetry Prize 2024 longlisted poet Hilary Davies as special guest at The Railway Inn’s monthly celebration of spoken word, Poetry Platform. In this special collaborative event, Hilary will be reading from her latest collection, Compass Light, which explores our relationships with both the human and natural world. As always, there will be an Open Mic for local poets to share their work too.
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Hilary Davies will be reading from her forthcoming fifth collection, Compass Light (Renard Press). She is a former Chairman of the Poetry Society, and has been an RLF Fellow at King’s College, London and the British Library. In 2023 she was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year award.
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Tickets are not required for this event - booking will give you an email reminder only. Arrive early to sign up for Open Mic.
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Suitable for: 18+ only
Duration: 3.5 hours approx
Format: poetry open mic, guest reading
Access: Relaxed performance, venue is up a flight of stairs, but there is access via the hill - ramp on request.

Online - via ZOOM
£20
Direct Address
Online workshop with Ella Frears
Wednesday 8th October
6:30 - 8:30pm
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Who are we addressing when we write? How can shifting the tone disrupt or enrich that writing? You’ll experiment with writing in various forms of address – from love letters to emails, from formal complaints to grocery lists, from proclamations to DMs and everything in between.
Join Ella Frears for a fun and low-pressure poetry workshop thinking about modes of communication, presented in collaboration with The Writing School Online.
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Ella Frears has been shortlisted for The T. S. Eliot Prize, a Sky Arts Award, and The Forward Prize twice. Her books Shine, Darling, and Goodlord are out with Corsair. She’s the RLF Fellow at the Courtauld, and hosts Tears for Frears on Soho Radio.
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The Writing School Online: founded in 2020 by Kathryn Bevis, The Writing School is here to help you find your creative voice. A team of experienced, award-winning tutors offer personalised guidance through their courses.
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This workshop is hosted by The Writing School Online and will take place online only.
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Suitable for: all
Duration: 2 hours (including short break)
Format: online
Access: subtitles available

Online - via Zoom​
£20
Canon or Cannon?
Online workshop with Will Harris
Thursday 9th October
6.30 - 8:30pm
A workshop on homonyms, errors, and orthographic deviance that questions which wrongs and rights shape our sense of the canonical – or cannonical. What counts as correct, and what happens when new rules are invented?
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Will Harris is the author of RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK. He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
This workshop will take place online only.
Suitable for: all
Duration: 2 hours (including short break)
Format: online
Access: subtitles available