For over twenty years, Silves has been the host for an annual celebration of poetry in English, Portuguese and several other tongues, including French, Flemish, Mauritian Kreol, Latin, Urdu and Japanese.

This year counts as a milestone, since the balance of professional writers was, at last, in favour of the Portuguese, an aspiration once only imagined by Peter Pegnall, Manuel Neto dos Santos, João Gomes and Simon Armitage. Simon led the first team of visiting tutors, alongside the amazing Jane Draycott; Katie Donovan, Don Patterson, Gerard Noyau and Andrea Holland have been amongst subsequent lineups.

The Café Ingles was the focus of the project, giving space, encouragement, great food and, occasionally, too much good wine. Susie, David and Carlos have been the brightest stars in our firmament.

They have been joined by Luis and Catarina and the entire team at Colina dos Mouros, professionals with friendly faces, even under duress. In fact, the entire city has given a welcome it would be difficult to describe and impossible to emulate. The Ponte Romana, Casa Velha, Mosaica, Art’aska and The Library have all improved our stay. Before this begins to sound like the Oscars’ ceremony, the names of Bert, of Maria Fernanda and Armindo must be acknowledged, for reasons they will appreciate. There is also the epicene ghost of John Roberts lurking in a dark corner!

What about the actual experience this year? 15 visiting students, aged from 20 to quite old. Translation sessions run by Sarah Greenwood, fluent in English and Portuguese and Professor Manuel Portela, fluent in too many, as well as the odd, Ur-languages of theory and cybernetics. He, too, has been a guiding spirit throughout. We had four tutors in English, Peter, Naomi Foyle and Moyra Donaldson as poets, Lisa Selvidge as novelist and writer of memoirs.

The troupe of Portuguese writers was led by the effervescent, utterly committed poet and curator, Hugo Lopes, also known as Cobramor. The poets were Ana Freitas Reis, D.H.Machado, Carla Moreira, Salvador Santos. Manuel Neto dos Santos interrupted his international schedule to join us for the reading. We are getting known, as Sam Beckett ruefully put it. Mark from L.A. and Joris from Belgium found a home in our midst and will, I am sure, return.

There will always be a limit of 15 visiting writers, in order for the workshops to be an effective size. However, the contingent of local writers and audiences can only grow and, perhaps, take a different form. We have moved into a sphere of collaborative creativity and will not let that go. Did I mention that we have already collected translations of poems from English to Portuguese and Portuguese to English, all realised by our resident poets? We see an anthology emerging in the not-too-distant future.

Credits: Supplied Image; Author: Client;

Dark Corners was the theme song of this year’s festival: next year, who knows? Please contact Peter Pegnall at peterpegnall@hotmail.com for further details, including enquiries about how to participate.