October festivals: National Poetry Day

National Poetry Day was founded in 1994 as a day of celebration to link people with poetry, and in 2013 it’s being held on 3rd October.

Founded in 1994, last year the event reached more than 50 million people in schools, offices, hospitals and homes, by getting people to try their hand at a bit of poetry. There are lots of events planned to coincide with the big day, including a group of Welsh poets taking a 24 hour challenge to write 100 poems, and readings from the John Betjeman Poetry competition for Young People at St Pancras station.

Each year a theme is chosen to run through planned events, and the theme for 2013 is water, taking inspiration from Coleridge’s poem, ’The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.