Drop-in with AJ Hardingson

Sunday 12th October

11 - 12:30pm

 

Cut, compose and create using classics ranging from Austen and Marlowe to Zephaniah as your starting material.

In this fun, playful and accessible workshop we will explore the cut-up technique and blackout poetry as ways to enhance, reclaim, remix, transform and revolutionise classics that we admire or revile into a piece of art distinctly our own.

By the end of the workshop you will have at least one piece of poetry collage art to take home (A4 in size).

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AJ Hardingson is a mixed-race, queer poet, author and storyteller. A recent mentee of the Write Beyond Borders international literature development programme, AJ is currently working on a poetry project on belonging and ethnic diversity in the New Forest.​

 

Suitable for: all ages, all abilities, no experience of reading or writing poetry required.

Duration: 1.5 hours

Format: in person, drop-in session.

Access: wheelchair accessible throughout, relaxed event, all resources provided.

Ruth Padel with Clare Pollard

Sunday 12th October 

11.30 - 12:30pm

 

In conversation with Clare Pollard, award-winning poet and prose writer Ruth Padel will discuss five ‘things’ that have inspired her or are symbolic of important stages in her development. She will accompany the discussion with readings of her poetry.

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This brilliant format - ‘Things Being Various’ - was devised by Jon Sayers for the inaugural Winchester Poetry Festival in 2014. Previous poets have included Annie Freud, Paul Muldoon, Sasha Dugdale, Jo Shapcott and Christopher Reid.

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Award-winning poet Ruth Padel has published thirteen poetry collections, novels, and non-fiction including the ever-popular 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem. Her collection Girl explores through the Annunciation, Cretan snake goddesses, and the poet’s own life how the world girls face is shaped by male power and male fantasy.

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Clare Pollard’s most recent books are the children’s novel The Untameables and the adult novel The Modern Fairies. She has published five collections of poetry with Bloodaxe, with her sixth, Lives of the Female Poets, forthcoming in 2025. Her poem Pollen was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is Winchester Poetry Festival’s current Artistic Director.

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Suitable for: all

Duration: 1 hour

Format: in person, poetry readings and conversation.

Access: venue is wheelchair accessible throughout

Richard Scott

Sunday 12th October

1:15 - 1:45pm

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Join poet Richard Scott as he performs a close reading of 'Flowers' by Arthur Rimbaud translated by Wyatt Mason - a poem which he has found inspirational to his personal poetic journey.

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'Flowers', or 'Fleurs', is one of Rimbaud's achingly strange and crystalline Illuminations and is a useful gateway onto this legendary collection of proto-Surreal and queer prose poems. 

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Richard Scott is the author of Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) and That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber & Faber, 2025). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

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Close readings are a firm favourite with the festival audience. These micro-lectures are free to attend and will take place in the ARC Space.

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Suitable for: all

Duration: 0.5 hours

Format: in person micro-lecture

Access: wheelchair accessible throughout, transcript available

Presented by Fiona Benson

Sunday 12th October

2 - 3:30pm

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Hosted by acclaimed poet and competition judge Fiona Benson, this exciting live event is an opportunity to hear us count down through the Commended poems to the winners.

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Hear the poems being read live by the poets themselves in this special prizegiving ceremony, as we celebrate the winners and launch the 2025 anthology.

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First Prize: £1000 | Second Prize: £500 | Third Prize: £250

Includes the Kathryn Bevis Prize for the strongest poem written by a Hampshire-based poet.

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Competition remains open until 31 July. Details can be found HERE​

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Winchester Poetry Prize is sponsored by Paris Smith.

The Kathryn Bevis Prize is sponsored by The Writing School Online and supported by Oliver Golding.

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Suitable for: all

Duration: 1.5 hours

Format: in person and online

Access: BSL interpreted

Fiona Benson, Richard Scott and introducing Oluwaseun Olayiwola

Sunday 12th October

5:30 - 7pm

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This event brings together three exceptional talents whose recent books all draw upon and renew literary traditions. Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s debut is steeped in poetic tradition and draws on texts from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen to Lowell’s Life Studies. Fiona Benson, known for her retellings of Greek myth, has now turned her attention to folklore and archival accounts of witchcraft. Richard Scott’s new collection reworks Marvell and Rimbaud to dazzling effect.

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Fiona Benson is the author of four poetry collections: Bright Travellers, Vertigo & Ghost, Ephemeron and Midden Witch. Three of these have been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize, and her books have won the Forward Prize, the Seamus Heaney Prize, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She is Winchester Poetry Prize 2025 judge.

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Richard Scott is the author of Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) and That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber & Faber, 2025). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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Oluwaseun Olayiwola is a poet, critic, and choreographer. His work has been published in the Guardian, ArtReview, the TLS, the Telegraph and elsewhere. His debut collection Strange Beach was published in January 2025 by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Soft Skull Press (US).​

 

Suitable for: all

Duration: 1.5 hours

Format: in person and online

Access: BSL interpreted