Swansea Poetry Festival (2027)

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Swansea Poetry Festival is a proposed new annual celebration of poetry, creativity, and community bringing together established poets, emerging writers, performers and audiences from across Wales and beyond.

Led by Swansea’s Poetry Into Light CIC in partnership with Grand Ambition CIC at The Grand Theatre and Swansea University, and supported by literary partner Seventh Quarry Press, the festival will offer a diverse programme across the city’s arts and culture venues.

The festival will create opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to encounter, share and develop poetry in its many forms. With a strong commitment to inclusion, the festival will champion emerging and marginalised voices, engage communities who may face barriers to participation, and create platforms for children and young people. The Welsh language will be embedded throughout the festival through bilingual programming, Welsh-language performances, artist commissions and partnerships with Welsh-speaking organisations, alongside a fresh approach to Dylan Thomas as a key figure of the city’s rich literary heritage. The Festival will align with Poetry Into Light’s Green Pledge, the commitment to promoting poetry as an art that transforms lives positively, and that sits within the goals of the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 (Wales).

Building on the community work of Poetry Into Light CIC, Swansea Poetry Festival aims to create a distinctive, accessible and artistically ambitious cultural event for the city that supports artists, connects communities, develops audiences and celebrates the many voices and stories of Wales, both past and present.

This event is supported as a proposed project by Creative Swansea, Swansea County Council.