The UK’s biggest – and joint-oldest – poetry festival returns to Ledbury from 26th June to 5th July.
For ten days, this small Herefordshire market town becomes a world-class poetry destination, with events spilling across churches, galleries, the Market Theatre, and walled gardens.
Expect live readings, conversations, workshops, music, and film, alongside guided poetry walks tracing the footsteps of local poets John Masefield and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Ledbury Poetry and Herefordshire Libraries’ annual Young Poets Competition top ten poets will also perform their work at the festival on Saturday 4th July.
It all builds to the free Ledbury Celebration – an outdoor festival of food, music, and poetry in St Katherine’s Square.
And of course, the Daff stops right in Ledbury, so there’s no excuse!
Explore the full programme and book tickets at www.ledburypoetry.org.uk
And in celebration of this fine poetry stop along the 232, here are two poems from our old Down the Line Bards on the Bus series – verses that celebrate the route, the views, and the simple joy of the journey…
From the Daffodil Bus
🌼 By Janette Ward
(with apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson)
Over the crossroads over the bridges
Buildings and houses, hedges and ditches;
Trundling along, what a good way to travel,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of hill and plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, all along the road,
Bus stops and people come and go.
Here is a child who clambers on deck
All by himself and up to the back;
Here is a dog who hides under a chair;
And a young lady with flowers in her hair!
Here is a man on a bike in the road
Patiently the driver goes slow.
Here is a windmill and there is a crow
Bye for now, until tomorrow!
An Ode to the Daffodil Line
🌼 By Sara-Jane Arbury
(with apologies to William Wordsworth)
When you wander lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vale and hill,
Make sure you join a happy crowd
Waiting for a bus called Daffodil.
By Newent Lake, under Upton trees,
Bus stops never more welcome than these.
Continuous (we hope) as the stars that shine,
The service provides a fair fare way
To follow a community line
Between Ross and Ledbury every day;
With much to see at a glance
And more to do now there’s the chance
Of travelling so our world won’t pay
The price for car dependency,
Everyone needs this bus to stay,
So use the transport company!
The 232 is worth the thought: –
What green wealth your journey’s bought.
For oft, when on your bed you lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
The bus appears in your mind’s eye
To take you to a place of altitude;
And then your heart with joy will fill
The next time you board the Daffodil.
