Cambridge Poetry Festival: 2025 In Review

After re-establishing the festival in 2024, our aim as a charity has always been to run open, exciting and accessible poetry events in Cambridge, and to foster engagement and collaboration between all groups in the city. For 2025, we wanted to really begin to bridge that divide between town and gown with events planned in collaboration with the local community and both universities, while of course raising some much needed funds to continue to run even bigger and better events as we head into 2026.

READINGS 2025

Our year of projects and community events began February 2025 with the kick-off meeting for
READINGS, a project run in collaboration with the Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University. This project, which we intend to run annually, sees MA students from the Graphic Design and Illustration courses working with poets to produce responses to their poems. Our thanks go out to all the poets involved in READINGS 2025:

The project culminated in a three day public gallery exhibition, including a one-night reading event and art sale, with proceeds split between the students and the festival charity. We’re very grateful to the Grand Arcade for allowing us to use this space, as it meant that the stunning work produced by the students and poets could be celebrated right in the heart of the city.

You can read more about it here: https://www.cambstimes.co.uk/news/25234395.cambridge-poetry-festival-returns-art-exhibition/ or watch our interview with That's TV

Cambridge Poetry Festival: 50 Years of Poetry

On the 12th July, we hosted a celebration marking 50 years since the first Cambridge Poetry Festival. It was a wonderful evening of poetry, music and dance, intended to celebrate both the festivals which have been, and poetry in Cambridge today. Our thanks go to Pembroke College for allowing to use this beautiful space to celebrate our festivals history and future.

Organisers from the first iterations of the Cambridge Poetry Festival as well as contemporary poets read a variety of work by writers from the festival’s history such as Allen Ginsberg, Seamus Heaney, and Ted Hughes, as well as their own pieces.

Several readers were accompanied by cellist, Talitha Annan. We also had the pleasure of working with local dance school Colours of Dance who choreographed a special piece to accompany a recording of a poem by Clive Wilmer.

Photos from the event can be found on our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMDvkrqInMN.

Readings By:

Performances by:

Summer in the Square

Our final event for 2025 was a free poetry workshop held outside Cambridge station as part of Summer in the Square , run by Cambridge Bid.

Angus, Jon and Freya spent an afternoon engaging with the public and encouraging passers by to dip their toe into poetry by playing games or contributing to a group poem.

Combining poetry and play really showed us the appetite and curiosity for poetry from the public, many of whom surprised themselves with how easy and fun it could be! It was a great sign that CPFs aim to make poetry accessible is achievable with even an afternoon.

Our plans for 2026

2025 was a fantastic year for the Cambridge Poetry Festival and we can’t believe that we’re already finalising a full schedule of events for 2026. The planning for READINGS 2026 is in full swing, with students and poets preparing for the project’s start in early Feb. An exciting collaboration with the Fitzwilliam Museum is also on the cards, along with a variety of different events taking place around the city. Watch this space!

Thank you!

The Cambridge Poetry Festival would like to say an enormous thank you to everyone who has supported our events over the past year. From buying tickets to volunteering, to the venues who generously lent us space to host our events, this has enabled us to really push forward with our aim to bring poetry alive to the community, we could not have achieved this without your support!

Have a wonderful festive season and a very happy new year!

From all the CPF Team