Join the SFL 2019 Team, sponsors, friends and volunteers to celebrate the start of the 4th Shrewsbury Festival of Literature at Stop! Cafe, Shrewsbury Museum and Gallery in the town's Square.

A freelance writer ever since he won the Gregory Award in 1974, Roger Garfitt has been Poetry Critic of London Magazine, Editor of Poetry Review, Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Swansea University. He runs a Poetry Masterclass for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education at Madingley Hall.

His latest collection, The Action, was published by Carcanet in August.

Roger now lives in the Shropshire Hills and he will be performing pieces from the work, In All My Holy Mountain: a celebration of the work of Mary Webb, during out Launch Party. 

In All My Holy Mountain tells the story of the novelist Mary Webb and reaches its climax with Gone to Earth, which she wrote during the First World War. Nikki Iles's atmospheric score is the perfect counterpart to Roger Garfitt's poems, taking elements from the English folk tradition and giving them a powerful new jazz identity. She continually varies the texture so that sometimes his voice is heard against the rhythm section, sometimes against a solo instrument, and often against the whole band as it rises to the words and takes flight. Nikki Iles has done much more than set the poems: she has created a jazz suite in six movements, a compelling score that clearly fires the band and draws the best from some of our finest soloists.

Tickets are £6 - buy them here.