Day Three Programme
Sunday 15 September
11am – The Bookshop Band – A Musical Workshop
11am – Daniel Light – The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering
1pm – Dai George: How to Think Like a Poet – The Poems That Made Our World and Why We Need Them
5pm – Rosanna Pike – A Little Trickerie
7pm – Darren Freebury-Jones – Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers
11am at The Malt House. Tickets £16
The Bookshop Band: A Musical Workshop
Ben and Beth are not only brilliant song writers, they are also talented musicians and enthusiastic communicators. Join them for a simple songwriting workshop, taking you through how they go about their craft, and starting a simple song or two.
Open to all ages/abilities.
Doors open at 10:30am. Talk starts at 11am.
11am at The Goods Shed. Tickets £8.50
Daniel Light – The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering
Dan will be introducing his new book, ‘The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering‘. Described as ‘a beautifully written and sure-footed history of mountaineering “before Everest”, full of wonderful stories and spanning continents and centuries’ by Sir Ranulph Feinnes, we will take you on a panoramic journey through the history of mountaineering,
We meet devout Incan priests who, scaling the Andes’ icy slopes, Gurkha riflemen who canvassed the Karakoram, and the tweed-clad mountaineers who made the first serious assaults on Everest, hauling yards upon yards of battered rope through the ice, and many more.
The White Ladder is an ode to mountains’ capacity to enthral, and the fundamental human drive to climb higher and higher.
Daniel will be in conversation with Kate Nicholson, climber and author of Behind Everest: Ruth Mallory’s Story
Doors open at 10:30am. Talk starts at 11am.
1pm at The Goods Shed. Tickets £8.50
Dai George: How to Think Like a Poet – The Poems That Made Our World and Why We Need Them
Poet, writer and academic Dai George will be introducing his new book about opening poetry up and making it accessible and understandable. Through short, biographical portraits, Dai provides an entertaining introduction to great works of poetry, and an inclusive guide to how we can read them.
His new book paints vivid pictures of a selection of poets throughout history: from Sappho, Li Bai and Rumi, to William Shakespeare and John Donne, Frank O’Hara, Pablo Neruda and Sylvia Plath. George thinks again about the canon, and champions major figures from other important cultures and communities, including China, India and the Caribbean.
Dai will be in conversation with JLM Morton, herself a great advocate for the role of poetry in everyday life, teacher and poet.
Dai George is a poet, novelist and Lecturer in Creative Arts and Humanities at UCLt.
Doors open at 12:30pm.
3pm at The Goods Shed. Tickets £8.50
Four Poets
Join us for a dazzling line-up of prizewinning poets, who will be converging on Tetbury to read poems on music, motherhood, masculinity, boxing, birds and much, much more.
As a bit of a challenge, email us an idea or theme, and one of our poets will write a poem on that theme that they will perform at the event.
Martha Sprackland is a writer, editor and translator now living in Nailsworth. Previously an editor for Faber & Faber, Unbound, CHEERIO Publishing and Poetry London, she was also co-founder of independent publisher Offord Road Books. Her debut collection Citadel (Pavilion Poetry, 2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Costa Poetry Prize. She is a tutor for Arvon and the Poetry School, and a mentor for the Women Poets’ Prize. She is currently translating the poems of sixteenth-century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross for Penguin Classics.
Declan Ryan‘s first collection, Crisis Actor, was published by Faber & Faber in 2023. His essays and reviews have appeared in many journals, including the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, the Observer, the Times Literary Supplement, the Baffler, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, and Boxing News. He lives in London.
Chrissy Williams is a poet, editor and comic book writer. Her writing has been featured on BBC radio and television, and her full poetry collections are Bear and Low, both from Bloodaxe. She edits the poetry magazine Perverse.
Will Burns was a Faber New Poet in 2014 with his debut pamphlet, praised in the Guardian for its ‘quiet intelligence and subtle ways of seeing’. In 2019 he released Chalk Hill Blue, a collaborative album made with the composer Hannah Peel, which set his poems to her music. Will’s first full collection, Country Music, was published with Offord Road Books in 2020, and his debut novel, The Paper Lantern, was published in 2021, after which he was named one of the Observer’s Top 10 Debut Novelists of that year.
There will be a chance to put your questions to the poets after the event, to buy their books, and to raise a glass with them in the pub next door!.
Doors open at 2:30pm. Talk starts at 1pm.
5pm at The Goods Shed. Tickets £8.50
Rosanna Pike – A Little Trickerie
Rosanna’s new book is one of the best books of the summer.
A Little Trickerie is based on the true story of the so-called Holy Maid of Leominster, a medieval con-woman who impersonates an angel and amasses a cult following.
The book is blazingly original, disarmingly funny and deeply moving. It portrays a side of Tudor England rarely seen, and is a tale of belief and superstition, kinship and courage, with a ragtag cast of characters and an unforgettable and distinctly unangelic heroine.
Rosanna will be in conversation with Dr Mark Hailwood (Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol), about her book, writing, and how women women can make their mark in a man’s world: how can fiction put women back in the centre of history?
Doors open at 4:45pm. Talk starts at 5pm.
7pm at The Goods Shed. Tickets £8.50
Darren Freebury-Jones: Shakespeare’s Borrowed Feathers
Darren Freebury-Jones is one of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars. He made headlines earlier this year by revealing that in 1598 Shakespeare acted in Ben Jonson’s play ‘Every Man in His Humour’, recycling and adapting some of the lines from that play in his own later work.
Freebury-Jones specialises in Shakespearean linguistic analysis, but has published works on other playwrights – Robert Greene and Thomas Kyd, amongst others.
In conversation with Jessica Chiba, Assistant Professor at the Shakespeare Institute, Darren will explore why Shakespeare still speaks to us today, the ways in which this actor-dramatist gives voice to so many different characters, and how he raises questions we’re still seeking to answer.
Shakespeare was described by one rival called him an ‘upstart crow, beautified with our feathers’. Now, over 400 years after his death, Shakespeare continues to ruffle feathers and delight audiences and readers.
Darren Freebury-Jones explores why Shakespeare still speaks to us today, the ways in which this actor-dramatist gives voice to so many different characters, and how he raises questions we’re still seeking to answer.
Doors open at 6:30pm. Talk starts at 7pm.
Directions to The Malt House for Bookshop Band Workshop
The Malt House is accessed through a door in the south east corner of The Chippings Car Park in the centre of Tetbury, immediately to the left of Martin & Malthouse Deli and Cafe. Go through the door and along a short corridor and the entrance to The Malt House is on your left. There will be a sign by the path leading from the car park. The What3Words location is ///padding.fuses.organisms.