Sell-out festivals and book sales up … it’s poetry’s renaissance

Against all publishing predictions, poetry, so long the Cinderella of literary forms, is back. Verse of all kinds is being celebrated across Britain in what readers and poets are now feeling confident enough to call a genuine renaissance.

The new popularity centres on contemporary and performance poetry and the evidence is not just in the demand for tickets to see stars of the scene, such as the award-winning Kate Tempest or the veteran punk poet John Cooper Clarke, but in high sales in bookshops and in the extraordinary proliferation of regional poetry festivals. Poetry book sales have gone up by more than 50% in four years, while there are now more than 30 annual events devoted to celebrating spoken and written verse.

Now Nottingham has joined the boom. Early next month the city will host its first spring poetry festival, moved to April following the launch of a books festival in the autumn. Its founders, who include the former TV comedy impresario Henry Normal, believe the city’s connections with literature, and specifically with DH Lawrence, make it the right place for a succession of literary attractions.

“A lot of places that have literary events are rural but much of what is being written is urban, because more people are living in cities,” said Normal, who is convinced his native Nottingham can support both events, especially as it has international status as a Unesco City of Literature.

Normal, who made his name by working with Steve Coogan at their highly successful television and film production company Baby Cow, unexpectedly turned his back on production and screenwriting last year to return to his first love, writing poetry.

“Steve and everyone at Baby Cow think I have gone a bit mad, but at this point in my life I want to concentrate on things that really matter to me,” he said. “I retired from TV on April 1 – and it wasn’t an April Fool joke. I had made something like 400 TV shows and it was about time I did something different.”

Normal, who began as a stand-up comedian and performance poet on Channel 4 with Jenny Eclair and Frank Skinner in the 1980s, co-wrote The Royle Family with the late Caroline Ahern and Craig Cash, produced Gavin and Stacey, Hunderby and Moone Boy, before moving into cinema with 24 Hour Party People, Philomena and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. His job at Baby Cow has now been taken by Christine Langan, the former head of BBC Films.

When it opens on 21 April Normal’s festival will follow on the heels of the Wenlock Poetry Festival and must fit in with a lengthening calendar of rivals, from Ledbury, perhaps the largest poetry festival, to more established favourites such as the TS Eliot Festival in Little Gidding. Other festivals devoted entirely to poetry rather than literature as a whole include those at Bristol, Aldeburgh, Swansea, Winchester, Bridlington, Swindon, Matlock Bath, Bodmin Moor, Torbay, Canterbury, Woodstock, Essex and on the South Downs. And that is to say nothing of grander events staged at Manchester, London and St Andrews in Scotland, or of those broader summer literary festivals which have developed a focus on poetry, such as Ludlow, Latitude, Ink in the north east and Port Elliot in Cornwall.

Donald Futers, the poetry editor at Penguin, has charted the rise of a new kind of modern poetry that is driving the resurgence by appealing to younger audiences. “It has a real sense of authenticity and immediacy,” he said. “These are very exciting times.” Recent figures from Nielsen Book Research show that in the past 12 months 1.1 million poetry books were purchased nationally.

Futers is reminded of the buzz around contemporary poetry in the 1960s, when the Mersey Poets had a close association with the British rock and pop scene.

Nottingham’s festival will feature a range of international talents from newer names such as Helen Tookey and Jah Digga to Carol Ann Duffy, John Hegley, Wendy Cope and Cooper Clarke.

Normal, who grew up in Bilborough in Nottingham, also founded the Manchester Poetry Festival. He began writing poetry at 14 but his latest collection, Staring Directly at the Eclipse, is his first publication for 20 years. Much of the work has been inspired by his relationship with his autistic son, Johnny, featured in an acclaimed radio programme last year.

Although he now lives in Brighton, he will be present in Nottingham all the year round – in name at least. The local Castle Rock Brewery has produced a beer in his honour, and to mark world poetry day last week on March 21. The poet helped to create the 4.2% golden mild ale, Henry Normal, which will go out to Nottingham pubs during the festival.