Arrived back yesterday from a full and delightful few days at Morecambe Poetry Festival 2025. It was certainly a memorable break. For these few days I'm pulled into a different sphere of being social. Things were as nice as last year, sweetened by reconnecting with people that we met then.
Here we are with founder Matt Panesh. Each year we intend to interview him for Ink Pantry, but can never find a spare moment (his moments are understandably precious and frenetic for these few days).
We arrived in good time on Thursday. We accidentally left the keyboard stand at Lancaster railway station, so Deb had to dash back in a taxi (it's a 20 minute journey) to collect it, which was fortunately where we left it. First lesson learned. After settling in, we, unusually, got dressed up for our performance. Normally we would do this at the venue, but perhaps it was unconscious memories of last year, parading down the sunny prom, attracting the (I must assume) awe of the denizens, made us think of making the 8-minute walk in our outfits. We left early, an hour before even the sound check, but I'd prefer to wait at the venue after everything is set up, rather than wain before. All of our equipment was in tow and heavy bags. Alas, those 8 minutes were the exact 8-minutes of a torrential downpour of rain and hail. We arrived soaked. Initial curses aside broke way to laughter. We dried up as best we could, and by the time of the performance at 10, everything was fine. Our performance went well, to plan apart from some accidental extension to 'Sunchild'.
A joy of performing first is that we can then relax into the festival proper. Our initial pre-fest event gradually became part of the festival and we found ourselves in the programme which was an unexpected delight.
The next few days were non-stop; visiting the local shops and seeing the poets in the Kings Arms, at the Library (which we visited for the first time) and stars in the amazing Winter Gardens. The Winter Gardens weren't so wintery this year, now that we'd planned to wrap up. John Hegley on the first night was a wonderful reactive performer, a natural, then the powerhouse of performance that was Luke Wright; outstanding.
Every poet of the festival granted something different. Many of the poems are comedic, fast, interspersed with humorous stories, yet, of course, there were also dark poets, ranty poets, literary poets. The latter rarely get the ovations of the comedy poets, yet perhaps that is because it's easier to get a laugh than a tear, and to be disturbed or affected in other ways isn't the recipe for applause, even if it is as powerful and affecting.
We attended an open mic at the library next day, initially to see our festival friend Kevin Brown, who held a workshop there. I signed up for the open mic upon arrival, but we had to dah away briefly to say hello to Kevin. I felt awkward at trying to do both, caught short between two events, oh to split in two, yet we returned in time to hear a few readers, speak a few poems. The amplifiers were powered by a bicycle, pedalled by Aaron Barschak, and we spoke with him at the end of the session.
We wanted to watch Kathryn Ratzko, the only poet we know from this area, so we were sure to attend. Her poems were brilliant, and curiously in a style like ours; visual, complex in emotions and words, not emphasising rhymes. It made me wonder if Cheshire poetry has a unique cadence, a lack of comedic punch more associated with Manchester. We had to leave for food before Edward Tripp, though his act, even at the start, looked brilliant. This also meant missing the Film Poem slot, which I'd have loved to see.
Our food breaks, which are now at least 90 mins, and relatively early nights meant that we were forced to miss more poets than we'd like, though we never stopped and saw as much as we could. Everything we saw was fantastic and inspiring in its own way. I didn't speak a huge amount, but enjoyed the social emergence. Of all people I spoke to I seemed to feel more of a connection to Nigel Planer. He mentioned his band, The Values. Henry Normal and Nigel were both wonderful that evening. As with most of the Winter Gardens acts, these were like semi-autobiographical evenings of anecdotes with occasional poems. I think that Michael Rosen only read one poem, for example. This did not matter, of course; these are all artists of great humanity.
Nigel Planer mentioned Brian May, as he produced the Bad News mock-rock album, just as Andy Hayward mentioned last week that he's working with Brian, and by coincidence, Dr May was performing live as part of the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday. Brian May has appeared in threes. There has to be a poem in that.
Morecambe is a unusual place, extraordinarily friendly. Shop prices are cheap. Many aspects of culture and architecture don't seem to have moved on in 40 years. It was interesting to see it bask in last year's sun, and as a something like a ghost town in this year's rain.
Now I'm back and catching up with many things. Today I've typed up full notes on the trip, done a litlte more organisation on the Sprot album, connected with many of the poets on social media, and prepared files for some future videos of our performance. I've also restrung my guitar for tomorrow's Good Vibrations, restrung new shoes (as mine decided to fall apart while on holiday), tried in vain to repair my glasses which also broke spectacularly on the first day, so I couldn't see anyone beyone 2 metres. Plus 4 or 5 other things. Onwards to the rest of the week.
