COLUMN: Why Poetry Festival is so good for the area

The local Labour Party’s monthly column is written by Welshpool Town Councillor, Dr Ben Gwalchmai, who issues a ‘call to action’ to support this weekend’s Welshpool Poetry Festival.

“Welshpool is not yet known for its literary prestige but I hope that it will be: did you know we have an annual Poetry Festival?

Run by the ever-brilliant and ever-resilient Pat Edwards, it is a labour of love for her so this this article is a ‘Call To Action’ for all the businesses of Welshpool: will you support our fledgling poetry festival?

It’s happening this weekend from June 6-8 and has been quietly pulling more and more people to the town, every year, and with its competition, it is a vital proving ground for writers to experiment and for new voices to be found.

We are incredibly lucky to have it. It is, however, still reeling from 14 years of Tory austerity: like all the arts across the UK, when it applies to funding bodies, their responses are that they’re stretched thin and can’t support even some of the bigger arts institutions like Welsh National Opera.

If you’ve ever searched for me online, you may know that I am also a writer and I want to bring a National Poetry Library of Wales to Welshpool – I want us to be a part of a literary network and I want our young people to be inspired by the activity at the centre of town.

I know that literature lifts people up, inspires people, and helps all our lives through good times and bad; I know this because it did it for me.

Without literature and poetry, I wouldn’t have moved on from working the manual labour jobs that I grew up doing (and still do occasionally).

Even if I had continued to do those jobs, I know that poetry would have enlivened them: when the Manic Street Preachers said ‘Libraries gave us power’, they were absolutely right; the value of literature is far more than the paper they’re made of, it’s in the connections and the compassion it creates, the touches and the truths, the free comedy and the free therapy. Literature can give us a fresh perspective and make the world feel more understanding and more understood.

We have some small, some medium, and some surprisingly large businesses in Welshpool and across our industrial estates. Some of them are multi-million-pound businesses.

If you know a business that needs to make charitable gifts or wants to attract more customers then please tell them about Welshpool Poetry Festival - it’s a gift to our town and to the future wellbeing of our town. One that they could help thrive.

For all those reasons, I’d like to repeat my ‘Call To Action’ for all the businesses of Welshpool: will you support our fledgling poetry festival? I hope so. In doing so, you help both the festival and our town thrive.”