Google "Lemn Sissay" and all the return hits will be about him. There is only one person in the world named Lemn Sissay

Headliner for the Newport Festival of Words, in partnership with Newport BID

Spend time with a master of the spoken word, seven years a chancellor, official poet of the London Olympics, Honorary fellow of Oxford and Cambridge colleges, winner of 2024 Hay festival medal for poetry, and a three times Sunday Times best seller.

Lemn Sissay OBE is a poet, playwright, memoirist and broadcaster. He has performed throughout the world from The Library of Congress in The United States to the national Theatre of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa to London Palladium in England. His television documentaries have been nominated for Grierson BAFTA and RTS awards. His work in radio has been nominated for Sony and Palm D’Ors.

For the past decade, Lemn Sissay has composed a short poem as dawn breaks each morning. Life - affirming, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the dark and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. Let the Light Pour In is a collection of the best of those poems, and a book celebrating this morning practice.

Doors will open at 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start. Nicole Garnon, chair of the Newport Festival of Words will present the welcome address. The first half of the show will last for 40minutes, followed by a 20 minute intermission and then a further 40 minutes which will include a Q&A session.

Additional Information - Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah (adapted by Lemn Sissay) is a key text on the WJEC GCSE Drama and English Literature syllabuses.

Efa Lois examines the tales of witches which permeate the Welsh psyche, its folklore, history and culture. The women are often radical and transgressive, enduring yet elusive. In Gwrachod Cymru/Welsh Witches Efa Lois retells their stories and brings them to life through her vibrant illustrations. She will be interviewed in this fascinating subject by best selling novelist and poet Catherine Fisher.

Follow the sound of clacking keys and step into a world of storytelling magic with public typist Adam Holton! Give him three random words and a character name, and watch as he types a unique story just for you—right before your eyes in just five minutes

Follow the sound of clacking keys and step into a world of storytelling magic with public typist Adam Holton! Give him three random words and a character name, and watch as he types a unique story just for you—right before your eyes in just five minutes

A two-hour, gently paced, flat walking tour of the City of Newport exploring the industrial, social and cultural history of the city with a keen focus on literature, words and language. Focusing on the language of Chartism and the Chartist Uprising, local place names and their meanings, literary works including internationally renowned poet WH Davies, and the role words played in the development of the city and its culture.

The story of Manic Street Preachers is unique in pop. Raging out of the stricken mining communities of south Wales in the late 80s, they were bonded by friendships, family ties and a self-styled 'geometry of contempt', whereby James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore would orchestrate the daring intellectual broadsides written by Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire. Through the prism of their music Keith Cameron tells the definitive history of Manic Street Preachers.

Join Newport author Odette Debono as she launches her first book White Sheep, a compelling and candid memoir of the drama and emotional turmoil that pervaded a docklands childhood while shining a light in the often funny and mundane moments that are always there, no matter what.

Join Operasonic and a plethora of Newportonians for an afternoon of music, spoken word and poetry.

Word Up! Creative Writing just got more creative. Join analogue collage artist and teacher Sarah Merton for one of two informal sessions sustainably celebrating the written word. You are invited to create blackout poetry from old books using marker pens and your imagination. Or, why not indulge in a punk tradition by spelling out a stanza using “ransom note” recycled newspaper letters.

Sessions run from 1pm in English and 3pm in Welsh

This reading will be a sharing haiku from an ongoing body of work centred on the River Usk. The poems approach the river as a living, changing presence shaped by time, seasons and human traces. The session will focus primarily on a reading of the poems, with reflections on haiku as a practice of connection with the more-than-human world.

Mr Newport tells the story of Aubrey Hames, a beloved political leader whose vision and determination helped shape the modern identity of Newport. Today, he remains the most decorated Newportonian by the people of Newport in the city’s history.

After two decades of academic research and undergraduate teaching Davina Quinlivan, and the world of university education, were approaching crisis; teaching online, ticking boxes for other people's diversity criteria, stuck, like so many others, in a cycle of fixed term contracts. Yet as a child of Anglo-Burmese parents, growing up in West London, academia had promised a way out. Something better.

This is her powerful, compelling story of fragmenting and rebuilding from the inside out, one that is filled with the voices of both Burma and Southall. Haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, Davina Quinlivan beautifully lays bare our blind spots as we grapple with decolonisation and the hypocrisies within our institutions of education.