Poetry at Priddy

Following the success of last year’s inaugural event, Poetry at Priddy is back with an evening of sublime and engaging poetry interspersed with music from Between the Acts.         

We will hear from these poets:

Mark Corcoran grew up on a farm in the Dublin Mountains, ten miles from the city, with several siblings, a rotary-dial telephone and an unreliable bus service. In 2025, he published his first poetry pamphlet, Some Invited Ghosts, with Yew Tree Press of Stroud. He’s working on his first full-length collection.

Winner of the Ginkgo Prize, Jane Lovell explores our connection with the natural world. Her latest collection, Tipping Point, focuses on ancestral traditions, polar exploration and ecological fragility. She is currently collaborating with artist David Suff on a book of birds. 

Katharine Towers has published four collections with Picador, most recently The Worrying Rose. She has won the Seamus Heaney Prize and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Philip Rush’s acclaimed poetry collection, Big Purple Garden Paintings, was short-listed for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. He has collaborated with the photographer Andrew Fusek Peters; his most recent book of poems is Camera Obscura from The Garlic Press

Day and time: Friday 19.30 Church

Visual art

Festival Procession with the Lost Giants      

Sunday on the village green from 12.45, plus workshops on Saturday (10-11.30 and 14.00-15.30) and Sunday (10.00-11.30)

This year we are pleased to be welcoming the Lost Giants, designers and co-creators of giants and beasts of disguise. Born of a 35-year-old giant-making tradition in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, their work revives and reimagines folk practices while bringing people together through acts of shared making and celebration.

Join them in their marquee in the exhibition space on the village green (opposite the main bar) for workshops suitable for all ages to help prepare for our festival procession on the Sunday.  In Saturday’s workshops, make something processional (think decorated sticks or something to wave about). Join a final workshop on Sunday between 10-11.30 where it will be ‘all hands on deck’ to cover our festival figure in foliage before her first trip around the village!

Our festival figure has been made by the Lost Giants and children from Priddy Primary School, and represents the ‘Fair Lady’ of Fair Lady Well.  Come and join the procession on Sunday (gathering from 12.45 outside the Lost Giants’ tent) and hear stories & a special song before setting off on a short walk around the festival site, accompanied by musicians from Folk @ Pill and Morris sides Kittiwake and Pigsty – all welcome!

Read more about the Lost Giants project.