Poet Matt Sowerby hosted the first Kirkby Lonsdale Poetry Festival

Matt Sowerby is a local lad who wanted to create a festival for people who thought 'poetry wasn't for them.'

The festival hosted top acts from across the country to perform in different venues across Kirkby Lonsdale. 

Matt introduced the show with a poem about Devil's Bridge, and brought two volunteers on stage to help him

This included anything from Barrow rappers Swerve and JD, Forward Prize winner Luke Kennard, to social media star Savannah Brown. 

The young bard created the festival with the help of some of the friends he made through his Creative Writing course at the University of Birmingham. 

We went to the first night, an open-mic event that was headlined by rappers Swerve and JD afterwards. Lunesdale Hall was full of punters and poets. The age range of the audience and the participants varied from teenagers to pensioners. 

Two of Matt's friends from University who helped run the event taking a quick break with a cat

The festival was funded by the 'very generous' Christopher Robins Charitable Trust, a legacy fund based in Kirkby Lonsdale. 

Matt introduced the evening and then ran about organising the event to get everything running as smoothly as possible. However, when he had a spare moment, he said: "I think a lot of people think that poetry is not for them and I just wanted to prove them wrong really."

An open mic performer

READ MORE: Kirkby Lonsdale named the best place to live in the northwest

"A lot of the way poetry gets taught in schools it's shown as a puzzle that needs to be cracked if you don't get it you're not smart enough or something."

Matt said that the festival 'could not have run without local support': "We've got eleven venues across the town, the vast majority of which have been provided for free."  

Matt kicking off proceedings

"We've got an incredible range of local artists as well as the national names. We've got local tech, local transport, local photographers-I could not have done this anywhere else."

He described the festival as having a 'DIY' ethos. While some acts in the festival paid tribute to Shakespeare's sonnets and the work of W.B Yeats, it provided a space for a new generation with fresh ideas of what poetry could be to come through.

View from the stage

For instance, poets sat in the centre of the town during the day and wrote poems on typewriters based on a set of ideas that the public gave them. 

Swerve and JD