Welcome to the 2017 South Yorkshire Poetry Festival!

As Ian McMillan announced at the 2015 festival, there is a poetry renaissance happening in South Yorkshire, and we’re inviting you to come along and be a part of it.

We’re hosting a series of poetry events in Sheffield and around South Yorkshire between Tuesday 16 May and Sunday 28 May, with a varied programme of readings, performances, open mics and poetry walks. We’re building on the work of the 2015 festival in bringing poetry to a variety of venues across South Yorkshire, and bringing you poets that are well-known alongside those that are up-and-coming. We’ve really enjoyed working with so many venues and organisations across South Yorkshire to put together this varied and exciting programme. Among the poets featured in this year’s festival are Ian Duhig, Kate Fox, William Letford, Roy McFarlane, Helen Mort, and Ruby Robinson. Click here for details of the full programme. You can find interviews with some of the poets here; we’ll also be adding a selection of poems to this page throughout May 2017. Any updates and changes to the advertised Festival Programme (where known in advance) will be posted on our News page.

We hope you enjoy the festival, whether you’re a first-time visitor or a South Yorkshire local. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this year’s programme and, in particular, Arts Council England for their generous support.

Update.  The 2017 Festival is now over. Thank you to everyone who helped to make this year’s Festival happen: the poets, the Festival team, the volunteers, the staff at the venues, our funders and patrons, and – most importantly – the audience. If you attended this year’s Festival, we’d really value your feedback. Please click here to fill in our short (one-page) audience survey; this will help us to improve and develop future Festivals.

You can view a selection of Photos from the 2017 Festival on this page. A series of short Films from the Festival can be viewed here.

Our Interviews series features brief encounters with Festival poets; click here to read the interviews. You can also read a selection of Poems by Festival poets here.

Details of other events taking place in and around South Yorkshire, including book fairs, workshops and festivals, can be found here.

Many thanks to our partners and funders for their support:

Arts Council England
Bank Street Arts
Hive South Yorkshire
Longbarrow Press
Now Then / Opus Independents
The Poetry Business
Rhyme and Reason
Sheffield Town Trust
The University of Sheffield
Verse Matters
The Writing Squad