SWINDON LITERARY FESTIVAL REVIEW: IT is as if literature festival director Matt Holland waved a magic wand over a fair-sized anthology of modern poetry (albeit one by exclusively living poets) and summoned them all to Swindon.
We have already seen and heard a roster including Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison, Rory Motion and UA Fanthorpe, and yesterday it was the turn of Peter Porter and the lesser-known but equally talented Candy Neubert.
Neubert, winner of the 1998 Faber and Faber Way with Words competition, began with some verses about her early life in and love for Africa.
She followed them with various poems she chose around the theme of human life from before birth to old age.
Where Neubert's roots are in South Africa, Peter Porter's are in Australia, and he read strong and contrasting pieces about that country and this he has lived in Britain since 1951.
Winner of the Queen's Gold medal for Poetry last year, he read from his latest collection, called Max is Missing.
The Swindon Museum and Art Gallery in Bath Road is an intimate venue which lends itself well to helping provide the intimate atmosphere which is the hallmark of a good poetry reading.
With three days of the festival yet to run, it is premature to be wondering about next year's, but it will take a strong roster of poets indeed to match the quality of the 2003 crop.
By Barrie Hudson
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