Poetry night at the Virtual Festival of Chichester

The star poet for this year’s Virtual Festival of Chichester is Costa Poetry Prize winner John Haynes.
John HaynesJohn Haynes
John Haynes

Although John cannot appear in person because of the current restrictions, he is headlining at the festival poetry event, offering a career-spanning selection of poems.

Chichester Poetry spokesman Barry Smith said: “Our contribution to the festival is a web page of poetry for readers to enjoy. Star poet John Haynes kicks off with a self-chosen selection to show how his work has developed. John, who lives locally, spent time working in universities in Nigeria and one of the poems was originally written under the Nigerian name of Idi Bukar. He also includes a section from Letters to Patience, which won the Costa Prize, and finishes with a brand-new poem, Faking It, paying tribute to his show business parents.

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“Alongside John’s poetry, we’re including poetry written by South Downs poets, including some quite well-known names from the poetry world so visitors to the site are sure to find something to their taste.”

Poetry Time featuring John Haynes will be uploaded to the festival site on Thursday, June 25 at 7pm. The second festival poetry contribution is from Barry Smith himself in his capacity as a performance poet. Viewers can click on the link to see Poetry & Jazz, which features Barry reading one of his poems, On the Rise, published by Frogmore Press. Jazz comes from the Sussex-based Charlotte Glasson Trio, featuring Charlotte on sax and flute and guitarist Chris Spedding on guitar. Chris has played with many of the greats of modern music including Paul McCartney and was a member of the novelty group the Wombles.

Poetry & Jazz is also being uploaded on Thursday, June 25 at 7pm. http://festivalofchichester.co.uk/virtual-festival. The session will remain online for the rest of the summer.