The Cheltenham Poetry Festival returns to a number of venues around the town this month with 10 days’ worth of events on offer.

This year will be the ninth annual instalment of the festival, and founder and CEO Anna Saunders explains how the first festival in 2011 came to be.

“I have lived here for a long time, half my life, so I feel like a native really,” said Anna, who is originally from Wirral. “I absolutely love the Cotswolds and the vibrant energy of this festival town.

“I had been running poetry events in Cheltenham for about 10 years and wanted to dedicate a full week to it. My background, in journalism and PR, helped when I was starting to promote the event.

“The first support I got was from Paul McKee who used to work at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum (now The Wilson) and over the years I've had support from members of the poetry community in the town.”

Anna, a five times published poet herself with a sixth collection due to be released next year, says that the success of the first Poetry Festival laid the foundations for the following years leading up to now.

She continued: “In our first year we began with a bang with a performance from punk poet John Cooper Clarke – he performed to a packed-out Town Hall Pillar Room. We ran 40 events and received some wonderful testimonials from press and public alike.

“Our programme was inspiring and eclectic and inclusive, celebrating poetry in all its manifestations and we fused poetry with performance arts, visual art and even food!”

Huge amounts of preparation and work goes into organising the festival every year from Anna and her team, from finding the venues, to booking the poets.

“The planning goes on all year and begins straight after the previous festival ends,” she added. “We fundraise then start booking performers and venues and then start our communications activities.

“It's a lot of work, but great fun and very satisfying to organise a yearly festival which features some of the UK's most exciting performers and writers.”

This year the festival will feature huge a variety of events, including slam poetry, live music, Q&As, and plenty more.

Anna runs through what she believes will be some of 2019’s highlights.

She said: “Our theme this year is ‘truth’ and we are going to be fake news free with ground-breaking and provocative performances from uncompromising artists such Jamie Thrasivoulou, Nafeesa Hamid, poet and rapper Casey Bailey, multi-prize-winning poet Kim Moore, Duncan Forbes, Anne Drysdale, and more.

“The festival also celebrates the power of poetry to raise awareness and facilitate change by featuring the work of protest poets and activists such as James Kearns and Kamil Mahmood, and also speaks out against the cruelty of blood sports in the launch of ‘For the Silent’ – a new anthology from Indigo Dreams in aid of the League against Cruel Sports.

“We offer diversity, excitement, inspiration, enlightenment, complexity and even a little unpredictability. After all, in the words of Oscar Wilde ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Other highlights include ‘Desert Island Poetry’ with Annette Badland, one of the country's most well-known actors who will be offering an insight into her work on stage and TV as well as sharing her poetry picks.

The Cheltenham Poetry Festival runs from Thursday 25th April to Saturday 4th May, in venues around the town including Cheltenham Playhouse, Smokey Joe’s and The Frog and Fiddle.

For more information visit www.cheltenhampoetryfest.co.uk