The Essex Poetry Festival 2011 celebrates poetry with a day of events on October 8th at the Cramphorn theatre in Chelmsford.

In the morning the prestigious Essex Young Poet of the Year Award, sponsored by local company Directa, will be presented.

In the afternoon there will be the chance for you to perform on the festival stage at the popular open Mic spot.
Martin Figura will be performing his poetry show ‘Whistle’ which had a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. It tells the deeply personal story of his mother's death at the hands of his father when he was nine years old. This show presents his story with a mixture of poetry and story-telling alongside the skillful use of family photographs. Driven by Figura's warm stage presence and gentle humour, this show is a profound and uplifting experience.
Essex poets: Stuart Bowditch (Southend), Ken Champion (Goodmayes) and Suzanne Conway (Colchester) will close the afternoon’s events.

The evening starts with competition judge George Szirtes handing out the £500 first prize to the winner of the 11th Essex Poetry Festival Open Poetry competition, and readings from the prize winners. The evening is rounded off with performances from three of the country’s best contemporary poets, expect heartfelt and heart-racing poetry from, Helen Ivory, Martin Crucefix and Pascale Petit. Pascale Petit’s most recent book of poems about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for this years T.S.Elliot award.

There will be events all over the county for the three weeks of the festival.
On September 21st,at High Chelmer, Chelmsford, Adamantine, five poets from around Essex Derek Adams, Tim Cunningham, Maggie Freeman, Adrian Green and Alex Smith are poets of contrasting styles who weave words: brilliant, tough, intense and entertaining.

On September 22nd. At the Greyhound Pub in Wivenhoe, the hugely entertaining Rhian Edwards will be performing with local poet Candyce Lang for poetrywivenhoe. While at Raleigh library on the 24th September Sundown Poets will host an afternoon of open mike poetry.

In Southend on Saturday September 24th, the global 100 Thousand Poets for Change is hosting poetry events at Empire Cakes, Westcliff-on-Sea. Essex  in the afternoon and at The Alexandra Yacht Club, Southend-on-Sea in the evening

 Essex libraries will host a series of poetry events. Essex poets will be reading from their work and answering questions about poems and poetry at Billericay (Eileen Mayer) Chelmsford (Tim Cunningham) Chipping Ongar (John Steer) Fryens (Derek Adams & Denis Ahern) Hullbridge (Dorothy Turner) and West Mersea (Adrian Green.) At Witham there will be an event featuring Laura May and others.

October 6th, American poets Katy Evans-Bush and Tamar Yosselof will be guests of the Southend Poetry Group, at the Naval and Military Club, Southend.

Further info: www.essex-poetry-festival.co.uk
email derek@essex-poetry-festival.co.uk

"This is what a Poetry Festival should be -- lively and serious, with a variety of events to exchange and celebrate poetry." Maurice Riordan