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Not many poetry festivals can boast the Poet Laureate tripping in and out of the local hostelry, making hand gestures at other poets through restaurant windows and generally enjoying herself, albeit with a sprained ankle. The Wenlock Poetry Festival, now in its third year, has been enthusiastically supported by Caroline Ann Duffy since its inception. Its other patrons include Gillian Clarke, national Poet of Wales and Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate.

The range of events is impressive as is the calibre of the poets reading, performing and facilitating workshops.

Venues scattered around the unique and charming location at Much Wenlock include the impressive The Edge Arts Centre [so that’s where all the lottery money went], a pottery, pubs and church halls.

This year I managed to attend Fred D’Aguiar’s 45 minute reading. He started by saying he was not quite sure how he should behave as he’s never read in a pottery before. He read from his book Continental Shelf and a number of new and mostly unpublished poems featuring vultures, each poem with an underlying commentary on US politics over the last few decades. At the end of the reading one member of the audience asked him “What do Americans think of your vulture poems?” He answered that he had only published one of these poems in America and in fact this had been the first time he had read so many of this collection. He explained that he had grown to admire vultures and as he observed them, came to see some of their behaviour as a metaphor for the behaviour of some sections of American big business and the excesses of successive Presidents. Vultures never eat anything that isn’t already dead.

Ian Duhig’s three hour workshop was quite remarkable. Over the previous few weeks or so each participant had shared one of their own poems with Ian and all the other participants by email. Ian had promised to treat each poem with sensitivity and respect as he understood that sharing a poem, especially a poem that may not be finished, is bound to be daunting to the authors. In theory he hoped to give fifteen minutes to each poem, but this didn’t quite happen.

He started straight in without recourse to allowing participants to introduce themselves. He had been through each poem and had things to say about each one. Sometimes he read the poem, sometimes he just picked out a line or word. He praised what he liked, questioned what he didn’t understand and suggested changes where he thought the poem could be improved. To manage to do this within three hours for all nineteen poems was quite a feat. There were a few more participants than he had originally anticipated so towards the end, he had to proceed quickly, allowing less discussion. In fact the workshop overran, but I would be surprised if anyone left without feeling they had spent quality time with a poet who knew his stuff.

My own effort was one of the last poems he dealt with. All the way through the workshop I was thinking ‘has he kept the worst till last?’ But within the few minutes he gave to my poem he told me what he liked and suggested that I should change this, move that, end with this and read these. I came away thinking that although I had got what I wanted from the workshop, I would have liked a little more time and some discussion on my poem. Some participants were less receptive to Ian’s suggestions. Occasionally he was persuaded that he had got it wrong. Overall, this was a stimulating event that was totally dependent on the personality and skill of Ian Duhig.

On Saturday night Carol Ann Duffy introduced Adam Horovitz and Ann Gray to a packed The Edge Arts Centre auditorium in an informal and amusing way. She had apparently insisted that Adam Horovitz, who read first, should wear a suit. Both his parents were poets, but Adam only took up poetry in order to continue a dialogue with his mother who died when he was 12. Ann Gray started with her poem inspired by a Bob Dylan song. Both Adam Horovitz and Ann Gray had recently published books.

Duffy [as Ian Duhig affectionately called her] seemed somewhat casual about what she read, apparently picking whatever caught her eye as she flicked through her latest book “The Bees”. She said she had to be careful not to read the same ones the following night and that she would ask the audience to boo if she did. Several of the poems she chose contained long lists, memorably the names of English pubs. She had been angered that the Post Office no longer wants people to include the name of the county when they address their mail. So we were treated to a poem that contained just about all county names. Her poem “Cold” certainly chilled me. Other poems she read included “John Barleycorn” and “Rings”.