THIS year’s Swindon Festival of Poetry starts tomorrow.

Poets and poetry lovers are looking forward to four days of performance, music and creativity.

The festival – this is the third – has the theme ‘remember’ and begins at the Central Library tomorrow at 10am with a free event called Poems Aloud.

Swindon-based poet and author Hilda Sheehan will be welcoming members of the public to share their favourite poems or read their own.

Festival organiser and poet Maurice Spillane said: “The festival is about bringing poetry to Swindon.

“What we’re trying to do is get to the people who probably enjoyed poetry at school but haven’t heard a poem since they left.

“One of the things we feel strongly about is that it’s a whole sector of literature that’s ignored.”

Don Share, editor of Poetry Magazine and the Poetry Fundation in Chicago, will be in Swindon throughout the festival, and other leading figures set to take part include Irish poet Maurice Riordan, who edits Poetry Review.

Other poets lined up for appearances are David Morley, Martin Malone, Lesley Saunders, Susan Utting, Claire Dyer, David Caddy, David Cooke, Caroline Carver, Cliff Yates, Jackie Wills, Allison McVety, Mohan Rana and Jay Ramsay.

Among the local talents taking part will be Shriekback founder and former XTC member Barry Andrews, who will join Don Share and other performers at New College on Friday for what is billed as a music and poetry extravaganza.

To mark the centenary of the start of World War One, the Swindon in the Great War project has organised two special festival events.

Project member Mike Pringle said: “On Sunday afternoon myself and Jonny Chambers will be giving talks at the Museum and Art Gallery.”

The talk, about the language of ordinary people in the era, will also include the launch of Mike’s new book, Five Chances, which is about five young men leaving Swindon to face the odds of trench warfare.

Tomorrow’s opening gathering at the Central Library will be followed at 1pm by another free event at the same venue, a film and poetry fusion put together by Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery.