Cambridge Poetry Festival

To the Editors:

The first Cambridge Poetry Festival is to take place April 18-21, 1975. International in scope, it will bring together a wide range of activities. As well as poetry readings, there will be exchanges of views and viewpoints through symposia, lecture meetings, and discussions. The relation of poetry with music and visual arts (including film) will be demonstrated, and it is hoped to cater for the full variety of interests and tastes among poetry readers and audiences today. In brief, the Festival will offer entertainment and stimulus, and the opportunity both for participation and for intellectual challenge.

Among the poets who have already agreed to participate are: Roy Fisher, W.S. Graham, Lee Harwood, and Charles Tomlinson (UK), John Ashbery and Edward Dorn (USA), Octavio Paz (Mexico), and Roberto Sanesi (Italy). Many others are being invited.

The Festival, whose Vice-Presidents are Professor Frank Kermode and Eric W. White, is being organized by the Cambridge Poetry Festival Society, which is a registered Charity. To launch an event of this kind, the Society is almost entirely dependent on the patronage and goodwill of people interested in the arts and literature, and financial donations are urgently needed. An appeal has been launched, and anyone wishing to make a contribution is asked to send it to Sydney Bolt, Honorable Treasurer, Cambridge Poetry Festival Society, Wilbury, Latham Road, Cambridge, CB2 2EG, England. Benefactors will receive full advance details of the events and will be listed among the Friends and Patrons of the Festival in the Festival Souvenir Program.

Elizabeth Thomas

Chairman

Richard Burns

Honorable Secretary

Cambridge, England