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Poetry has the power to lift the soul but it can also provide practical experience as proven by a successful partnership between the University of Winchester and Winchester Poetry Festival.
In 2018 the University and the festival signed a five-year partnership aimed at strengthening the cultural life of the city and encouraging more participation from young people.
The Festival, founded in 2013, is held biennially and the organisation also holds an annual poetry competition and literary events throughout the year.
The new three-year agreement will enable more collaborative work between both organisations and provides work placements and volunteering opportunities for students with the Festival plus special access behind the scenes at Festival events.
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Vice-Chancellor Professor Sarah Greer and Poetry festival chair Jane Bryant shake hands after signing the new partnership
The agreement was signed in the appropriately named Shakespeare Room at the University’s West Downs Campus this week.
Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Sarah Greer, said: “We are delighted to be celebrating the work that the Winchester Poetry Festival does in the region with young poets, schools and community groups.
“The University and the festival share a fundamental belief in the power of poetry to bring people together and to make a difference.”
Professor Greer said she was looking forward to the positive impacts the partnership would have on the lives of students.
Jane Bryant, Festival Chair, welcomed the partnership renewal which both sides had entered into with "joy and enthusiasm".
She said: "We very much value our new partnership with the University of Winchester. The creative writing course is thriving at the University of Winchester and it is fabulous to have the opportunity to link in this way with its students. We are particularly enthusiastic about encouraging all students to engage with poetry and to experience the brilliant and innovative curation of our Artistic Director, Clare Pollard, building their own expertise in writing poetry, but also in the sheer enjoyment of poetry in all its forms.”
At the signing ceremony Reader in the Department of English and Creative Writing Dr Julian Stannard (pictured above) who recently won the prestigious Lerici Anglo-Liguria Prize, gave a reading of three short poems from his bilingual collection Sottoripa: Genoese Poems.
The prize honours English language poets who pay tribute to the literary traditions of the Lerici and Liguria area of northwest Italy, frequented in the past by Byron, Shelley and DH Lawrence among others.
Photos by Dominic Parkes Photography
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