Poetic Shenanigans at the Heart of the Festival
Renowned poet Hugh McMillan, casts his eye over this year’s programme and plucks out some poetic gems.
Renowned poet and long-time supporter of Wigtown Book Festival, Hugh McMillan, casts his eye over this year’s programme and plucks out some poetic gems.
Poetry has always been a powerful strand to the shenanigans at the Wigtown Book Festival and its organisers have been careful in the past to balance the more eye-catching authors with equally deserving poets from Scotland and, indeed, Dumfries and Galloway. I remember myself in the very first festival, the main room in the town hall being packed with a parliament of regional poets. Is that the collective noun? A Dispute of Poets? A Catastrophe?
In 2025 the festival is again reserving morning slots for new regional writing. Dumfries and Galloway remains a powerhouse of writing in both poetry and prose and the festival is correct to reflect this. It can also, partially, take credit for it: the book festival’s presence in the region has been a great shot in the arm. Local Writers’ Spotlights appear in the Open Book at 10.30am every morning.
From first to last, from young to old
Poetry appears in the main programme in 2025 many times, from first to last, from young to old. First up is the social media sensation Len Pennie (Saturday 28, 6.30pm), who has achieved that most unusual of feats, writing a best-selling poetry collection in Scots. Another prize-winner, Marjorie Lofti (October 1, 4.30pm) reads poetry of exile and change from her Forward Prize collection, published by Bloodaxe.
New faces
New faces Charles Lang (Monday 29, 4.30pm), and Colin Bramwell (October 2, 4.30pm) are exciting talents. Lang, with humour and empathy, gives us his personal perspectives of Glasgow while Bramwell re-imagines the work of the bold Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa. Another reimagining comes on Tuesday 30, at 4.30pm when I re-tell the 9th-century Welsh poem the Gododdin based on the train from Dumfries to Carlisle, published as a long poem by Dumfries based Roncadora Press.
On Sunday 28, at 4.30pm Julie McNeill, born in Carlisle but re-born in Glasgow, reads from her latest collection Love Goes North, from Luath Press, a moving testimony to the liberating power of travel and travellers.
Final weekend
There’s a lot of poetry in the final weekend. There’s the big poetry prize giving, of course, (Friday 3, 7.30pm) where the judges will reveal the winners of the categories in the world-famous Wigtown Poetry Prizes. Before that, though, poet Gerry Cambridge tenderly tells us of his Ayrshire upbringing (Friday 3, 1.30pm), and the spoken word star Imogen Sterling returns to read works in progress which are bound to be both frank and entertaining (Friday 3, 4.30pm). At 3pm on the same day, poets Magi Gibson and Ali Whitlock combine to talk about poetry, poets and probably other stuff, in a refreshingly unstuffy live show.
Bookending Wigtown 2025 is the evergreen Ruth Padell (Saturday 4, 4.30pm), a poet at the height of her powers, whose new collection Girl, published by Chatto and Windus in 2024, takes a startling new look at girlhood, the realities and the stereotypes.
Festival familiars
On top of these treats we have periodic appearances by Renita Boyle, weaving in and out of the adult world, entertaining child and pensioner alike with her hugely versatile poetry and stories and we have (the festival would be lost without it) the launch of the local literary magazine Southlight (Saturday 4, 1.30pm).