To book places for any (or all) of the events telephone 01387 262084.

2.30-4pm Poetry Workshop – ‘At home: living in the poem.’

With Helen Mort

 What makes a landscape ‘home’? And how best to write about places we know well? Helen Mort, Poet in Residence with the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage (Wordsworth’s home when he wrote much of his greatest work) will look at how to make familiar landscapes strange and how writers from Wordsworth to Philip Larkin and Ian McMillan have explored and reinvented the idea of ‘home’ in poetry.

6.30-7pm William Wordsworth: Selected Poems

Helen Mort and Andrew Forster, Poet in Residence and Literature Officer with the Wordsworth Trust, will read and talk about some of their favourite poems by Wordsworth along with new poems inspired by living and working in Wordsworth’s home.

7.15-8.15pm An illustrated artist talk by Charlie Poulsen

Charlie introduces the work in his exhibition and further afield. Find out how plants and landscapes have inspired some of his recent living installations.

A very warm welcome

How to be happy. What whiskies to drink. How to be wrong. And how to write. How to be green. And to have green fingers. Who came before us. Where be monsters and why love hurts. Why the financial world stopped turning. How to juggle (and not just financially). How to be a pilgrim, an explorer, the perfect host. These are just some of the things you can discover at this year’s Wigtown Book Festival.  But, just as importantly, you will find good company, fine food, wonderful bookshops and some of the most beautiful countryside in Scotland. We hope you stay a while.  Adrian Turpin, Festival Director

Wigtown Ink

For writers, by writers – a festival within a festival.  Fresh for 2010, Wigtown Ink is a festival within the festival celebrating new and established literary talent from within Dumfries and Galloway, as well as offering advice and inspiration to writers at all stages of their careers, wherever they come from.  For more info please click the link: http://www.wigtownbookfestival.com/pdfs/WigtownBookFestival2010.pdf