Authors ~ Storytellers ~ Poets ~ Musicians ~ Acrobats
Discussions ~ Readings ~ Talks ~ Performances
SUNDAY 10th MAY
CHILDREN AND FAMILIES DAY – for all ages, children, and families.
Light refreshments, snacks, and lunches available on site!
Lower Shaw Farm, West Swindon SN5 5PJ
Tel 01793 535534
10am - 4pm ~ 10th May ~ £5
Tickets also available on the day at the gate!
10.30am onwards – Campfire Storytelling with seasoned storyteller CHRIS PARK.
Head for the tree-surrounded Circle Garden, take a seat by the campfire, and Chris will tell you tales from here, there, and everywhere!
11am – Games Workshop with circus performer DARINE FLANAGAN.
Time to warm up for a busy day of performances and play. Try some hoola-hooping, juggling, acrobatics, and more. Great physical fun for almost all ages!
12 midday – How to be a Bewilderbeast – an all-ages show, for all the family!
Join The Mother Wolf Club for a wild, wonder-filled, and creative adventure. A chance to roar, wriggle, dance, and dream, as songs grow scales, poems sprout wings, and paintings burst to life. You may even create your very own Bewilderbeast!
"A workshop in keeping it surreal!"
2pm – Wonder, Thunder, Blunder – a presentation of brilliant poems, whose writers were mentored by Michael Rosen. These poems, about climate change and the wonders of the world, are presented today by the book’s child and adult-friendly genius editor MATT HARVEY.
3pm – Finale Performance with Jacob Hi-Ho and the LSF Circus Crew.
To end the day, gravity-defying fun and frolics on the front lawn!
All day, look out for WATERSTONES BOOKSHOP with their wonderful
selection of books for the young and young at heart!
ALSO, on Children and Families Day at Lower Shaw Farm, there may be a
TREASURE HUNT, TALKING with the ANIMALS, READING & WRITING
TIME, and maybe even a little bit of PLAY, ROPE-SWINGING, and
HAMMOCK-JUMPING in the BIG BARN!
Come, down to the farm, and have fun!
Festival Finale - where the Festival ends!
FESTIVAL FINALE - with stories, poems, songs, circus theatre, wordplay, music, performers, and pleasure, this promises to be a fitting Finale for the 33rd Swindon Festival of Literature.
Arts Centre, Devizes Road SN1 4BJ
Tel 01793 535534
7pm ~ 10th May ~ £10 (£9)
The Mother Wolf Club presents Phenomonopoly – a hilarious and surreal game show and part high-brow panto, hosted by the pun-loving Minotaur, and featuring fowl-mouthed punk chicken John Cooper Cluck and dating guru Pink Freud, assisting audience members in the creation of the most unhinged fridge-magnet poem imaginable, in an attempt to save language from devolving into emoji soup. Wacky, weird, and wonderful!
Zimbabwean multi-instrumentalist Tawanda Mapanada brings a blend of marimba, saxophone, vocals, and audience participation to proceedings.
Writer, poet, enemy of all that’s difficult and upsetting, and Festival favourite Matt Harvey has a way with words, which has taken him from Totnes to Wimbledon via Radio 4, the Edinburgh Festival, and the Work section of The Guardian. The first of his many poetry anthologies was The Hole in the Sum of my Parts, whose twentieth anniversary he celebrated by staring into the abyss of his own soul, holding the gaze of what looked back at him and saying, ‘Yep, that’s me…’
Homegrown Jacob Hi-Ho and circus friends will bring the Festival Finale to a fitting close with unpredictable performance and props, including the well-travelled and weathered watering can!
A final celebration of words, music, & circus skills!
