This year’s Rye Arts Festival, which will run from September 9 to 25 sees some exciting new venues in Rye added to the roster and early bird tickets for selected events are available now.
Rye Baptist Church in Cinque Ports Street is an ideal setting for literary talks as it is bright, light, comfortable and disabled-access-friendly. Everything the Methodist Church was but with the added benefit of having the large cattle market car park almost on its doorstep.
And it will be the venue for two fascinating and linked events hosted by Dr Pat Argar which explore the outstanding literary heritage of Rye and the surrounding area.
On Tuesday, September 13 in Part 1: Writers in Rye and Romney Marsh, Pat explains how the area had long been a haunt for writers but in the early 20th century there was a golden era. Of course, there was Henry James in Lamb House, but nearby Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford and Edith Nesbit sought and found inspiration for their writing.
A week later, on Wednesday, September 21, Pat will be back and will move on to the inter-war years, when our corner of England was a hotbed of literary creativity. In Part 2: The Long Weekend, she will talk about Sheila Kaye-Smith, who was massively popular; Radclyffe Hall was breaking new ground; Smallhythe Place was a fulcrum of writing creativity under its chatelaine Edy Craig, the daughter of Ellen Terry; and Russell Thorndike found “Syn” lurking in the marshes.
The Brewery Yard Club in Landgate is an intimate venue with a well-stocked bar; a warm, welcoming host in Jane Brook and attentive staff all creating an ambiance ideally suited to spoken-word events.
We will celebrate hidden queer histories with award-winning poet Joelle Taylor, winner of the 2022 TS Eliot prize, and award-winning writers Neill Bartlett and Sam Kenyon who will be at the Brewery Yard at 3pm on Friday, 23 September.
And later that evening at 7:30pm, the club will host a wonderful and inspiring Bold Queer Poetry Soiree. Hosted by Nathan Evans, the UK poetry slam winner Keith Jarrett will be joined by Joelle Taylor.
There will be a number of other events at these venues which will be revealed when the whole festival programme goes live on July 25. In the meantime, tickets for these events can be purchased online only at the Festival’s website www.ryeartsfestival.org.uk.
Image Credits: RAF .