The Knighton Festival of Books, Art and Music celebrates its sixth year in October with a host of exciting events. The packed programme includes poetry readings, authors’ talks, Willow Globe Theatre Company , a film, an art and book fair, craft and writing workshops, alongside a Meet the Artist event. This will all take place, or start from, the Knighton Community Centre over the weekend of 11 – 13 October.
The Festival begins on the 11th with a poetry themed afternoon. We are delighted to showcase the work of three outstanding poets: Grahame Davies, Nicholas Murray and John Barnie who will read from and discuss their recent collections. Tickets for the poetry afternoon are £6, includes a glass of wine.
The Festival art exhibition this year in the gallery atrium is an interpretation of part of Offa’s Dyke by The Picturemakers. The exhibition consists of a frieze of 11 panels created by members of the group working in close collaboration.
In the evening Flicks in the Sticks will be showing Bright Star. Directed by Jane Campion, starring Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish. Finely crafted, terrifically well performed and subtly told tale about the forever-stalled relationship between John Keats and his Hampstead neighbour, Fanny Brawne who he was not able to marry because of his poverty. This is a well-focused, deeply affecting portrait of the poet and his muse at a particular time.
On Saturday 12th October there will be an art and book fair with lots of stalls in the main hall during the day plus come and try your hand at Chinesse calligraphy and other crafts. Cafe will be open for refreshments
There will be a series of writers’ talks in the Reynolds Room throughout the day. 10 am Writing the book you want to write: a discussion with Sarah Burton and Jem Poster, 11am Monica Macias: Black Girl from Pyongyang, 12pm Professor Fiona Sampson: Limestone Country, 2pm Sarah Burton and Jem Poster: Eliza Mace: Uncovering the Truth, 3pm Ariane Bankes: The Quality of Love, 4pm Joe St Clair: Transcendence. Each talk is £5 entrance
On Sunday 13 October 2pm Dark Land Dark Skies – Martin Griffiths: Dark Land, Dark Skies rediscovers the Celtic night sky in its guide to astronomy and its links to the ancient mythologies of the Welsh peoples.
3.15pm The Follet Valley and Juge Lombard Murder Mystery series – Ian Moore
5pm – The Willow Globe Theatre Company presents Twelth Night
All events will be held in the Knighton Community Centre unless otherwise stated below. Some events are free, others have a small charge of £5.
For full details of the programme, see below
Welcome to this year’s Festival. Most events will take place or start from the Knighton Commuity Centre. All the outdoor events are free, but there is a small charge for the talks as shown below. Tickets for all the events can be pre-booked through the Eventbrite website. Tickets can also be purchased on the door.
Poetry Afternoon
The Festival begins with an afternoon devoted to poetry. We are delighted to showcase the work of three outstanding poets: Grahame Davies, Nicholas Murray and John Barnie who will read from and discuss their recent collections. Tickets for the poetry afternoon are £6, includes a glass of wine.
2pm Grahame Davies: A Darker Way
Davies is a poet in the bardic tradition who speaks to and for the community, exploring what it is to be human. His work has been compared to that of Philip Larkin, alert to both the superficiality and the seriousness of the everyday. A Darker Way is a collection of poems and songs which trace a hard-won but redemptive path between idealism and irony, failure and faith.
3pm Nicholas Murray: River Run: for the Wye in Hard Times
As the subtitle suggests, this is a clutch of poems responding to the contamination of the River Wye. River Run is a poetic “broadside”, a small group of poems about the current state of the River Wye focussing on pollution and the threats to the river which so many people locally are campaigning about just now. Nicholas will also read from his last but one collection The Dictionary Speaks (2023) and other nature/environment poems.
4pm John Barnie: Dunes of Cwm Rheidol
Continuing the environmental theme, John Barnie’s poems focus on the world we inhabit and the world we are making. In spine-chilling imagery and with a linguistic dexterity that makes words shine, we are taken to a landscape that is exquisite and familiar, yet simultaneously overwhelmed with wreckage and grief. These urgent poems carry our collective grief for all that is lost.
6pm The Picturemakers: Meet the Artists Event
The Festival art exhibition this year in the gallery atrium is an interpretation of part of Offa’s Dyke by The Picturemakers. The exhibition consists of a frieze of 11 panels created by members of the group working in close collaboration.
The Picturemakers / Y Llunwyr is a collective of visual artists, based in mid-Wales and coming from a variety of backgrounds and environments. Their work ranges from the representational to the abstract, with an emphasis on an engagement with the natural world and the landscape in all its forms.Their first ever exhibition was entitled Cynefin, which means “affection for familiar places and experiences, both individual and collective”.
7.30pm Film show – Flicks in the Sticks presents: Bright Star
Directed by Jane Campion, starring Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish. Finely crafted, terrifically well performed and subtly told tale about the forever-stalled relationship between John Keats and his Hampstead neighbour, Fanny Brawne who he was not able to marry because of his poverty. This is a well-focused, deeply affecting portrait of the poet and his muse at a particular time.
Tickets £6 on the door
10 am to 4 pm Arts, crafts and books market
in the main hall of the Comm – free entry. There will be a wide range of stalls selling new and secondhand books, plus arts and crafts for sale. Come and try your hand at Chinesse calligraphy and other crafts. Cafe will be open for refreshments
10 am Writing the book you want to write: a discussion with Sarah Burton and Jem Poster
An event for anyone interested in the process of writing. Novelists Sarah Burton and Jem Poster have both taught creative writing for the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and are also the authors of a handbook for fiction-writers, The Book You Need to Read to Write the Book You Want to Write. In this session they will discuss key issues in fiction-writing and invite questions from the audience.
Tickets £5
11am Monica Macias: Black Girl from Pyongyang
In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was transplanted from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea. She was sent by her father Francisco, the first president of post-Independence Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung. Within months, her father was executed in a military coup; her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their life in Pyongyang. Her memoir thoughtfully reflects on a life shaped by global events, her efforts to understand the world outside of North Korea and where she belongs in it.
Tickets £5
12pm Professor Fiona Sampson: Limestone Country
A Guardian Book of the Year, Limestone Country is a perceptive, lyrical evocation and investigation into four landscapes in Europe and beyond. Seemingly disparate these places are bound together by their limestone geology, by personal experience and Fiona Sampson’s unique imagination. Limestone Country delves deep into the heart of these landscapes: the people, wildlife and culture, told through vivid snapshots of daily life, farming routines and encounters with the wild. It is a meditation on the meaning of place, how we shape it and how it shapes us.
Tickets £5
1pm Kandinsky’s Daughter – Live Music in the Cafe
Lunch will be available in the Cafe from 1pm to 2pm
2pm Sarah Burton and Jem Poster: Eliza Mace: Uncovering the Truth
Stuck in a crumbling manor house in the Welsh borders, and battling for her independence in an age – the 1870s – when relatively few women were in a position to exercise influence in the wider world, Eliza Mace is thwarted by powers that conspire to protect, control and deceive her. But when her father goes missing in mysterious circumstances, her determination to uncover the truth is unstoppable. Following the publication of Eliza Mace earlier this year, this event will focus on the two genres represented by the novel – historical fiction and detective fiction – offering insights of broad interest to readers of both genres, as well as to aspiring writers.
Tickets £5
3pm Ariane Bankes: The Quality of Love
When Ariane Bankes’ mother Celia Paget died, she inherited a battered trunk stuffed with photographs and letters belonging to Celia and her twin Mamaine. The correspondence charted the remarkable lives of the Paget sisters and their friends and lovers, including Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir, Dick Wyndham, Sacheverell Sitwell and George Orwell. Out of this rich unseen archive, The Quality of Love weaves the story of these charismatic and devastatingly beautiful sisters who overcame a meagre education to take 1930s London society by storm and then move among Europe’s defining thinkers during its most dramatic decades.
Tickets £5
4pm Joe St Clair: Transcendence
Transcendence takes readers on an extraordinary spiritual journey to the heart of what it means to be human at a time of huge global upheaval, change and uncertainty. Author Joe St Clair explains in clear and concise language who we are, why we are here and what our purpose is as beautiful immortal souls facing the challenges of everyday existence.
Tickets £5
2pm Dark Land Dark Skies – Martin Griffiths
Dark Land, Dark Skies rediscovers the Celtic night sky in its guide to astronomy and its links to the ancient mythologies of the Welsh peoples. Astronomer Martin Griffiths subverts conventional astronomy by repopulating the night sky with myths from oral traditions which were overtaken by the classical naming of constellations and planets as astronomy developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Celtic mythology and traditions bind the stories of the night sky to events, symbols, literature and cultural trappings which are very much a part of life in Britain today.
Tickets £5
3.15pm The Follet Valley and Juge Lombard Murder Mystery series – Ian Moore
Beginning with the bestselling Death and Croissants, the Follet Valley Mystery books centre around a middle-aged, British B&B owner turned amateur sleuth who finds himself out of his depth when a world of crime lands unexpectedly at his doorstep. An unputdownable, new mystery series set in rural France by comedian, TV/radio regular, and bestselling author Ian Moore.
In the Juge Lombard Mystery Series, when an English expat is brutally murdered, his charred corpse left on a Loire Valley hillside, the police turn to juge d’instruction Matthieu Lombard to find the perpetrator. Instead, Lombard discovers a wealth of secrets, grudges and feuds in the idyllic town of Saint-Genèse-sur-Loire.
Tickets £5
Twelfth Night – one of Shakespeare’s best loved plays and sunniest comedies. Twelfth Night is full of music, merriment, misconceptions and madness – set in fairytale Illyria, a ship is wrecked but love is in the air….
We are delighted to be joined by the Willow Globe Theatre Company for the Festival finale performance of Twelfth Night. Tickets are £12/adult, £6 U16s and £30 Family ticket (2 adults, 2U16s)
To find out more about each day please go to www.knightonfestival.wales
