A NIGHT of poetry, juggling, dance and laughter rounded off the 17th Swindon Festival of Literature.

A sell-out audience was at Swindon’s town hall on Saturday for the festival finale, which has become part of the two-week festival’s tradition.

Organiser Matt Holland joked that tickets had been sold on the black market prior to the event.

Opening the evening, he said: “I hope you like it because there are many people that wanted to come and they can’t.”

Jake the Juggler, who launched the festival on March 18, closed it with an impressive juggling act which he combined with a story.

Earlier in the evening he had opened the finale event with a mesmerising diabolo performance. This immediately got the audience clapping along.

Fifteen years after she became part of the first impromptu Swindon literature festival in 1995, Bolton poet Clare Pollard returned to the town.

Her first poem, written when she was 17 and entitled Still Life, was the very same one she had read all those years ago.

Fellow poet Luke Kennard’s self-deprecating style with a beer in one hand immediately won over the audience.

Comments in between poems included: “Someone said to me you shouldn’t be so self-deprecating and there’s only one thing you can say to that – sorry.”

Daljit Nagra used the cultural conflict between his Indian background and growing up in the west to great effect.

The poetry was punctuated by a performance from Swindon’s Swerve Dance Theatre Company.

Fesstival organiser took a risk - and boy did it pay off!

Organiser Matt Holland said the risks he had taken with this year’s ‘festival of ideas’ had paid off.

He said for this year’s two-week event, which ended on Saturday, he had wanted to try something different, bringing in scientists and philosophers as well as traditional novelists and poets.

He said what had impressed him was that lesser known known names such as Anil Ananthaswamy, who spoke on his visits to telescopes around the world, and Cleo Paskal, who spoke on global warming, had outsold Cherie Blair.

Mr Holland, said: “It has gone beyond my expectations because I thought when people opened the programme they would be slightly puzzled.

“I have a sense that the people of Swindon like a range of ideas rather than just celebrities.

“I took a risk this year of bringing in authors who I thought had something to say which I feel was vindicated.

“We have had record turnouts and Cherie Blair didn’t even get in the top 10 in terms of numbers.”

Mr Holland said he believed literature went beyond traditional types of writing.

“For me if I was asked for a definition of literature it’s the stories of life well told with a bonus of an exploration of ideas.

“It amazes me every year that the people respond to this.

“It’s a secret wish I have, but I’m absolutely ecstatic that other people share that wish and actually celebrity has limited mileage and ideas are absolutely timeless and universal and Swindonians recognise that.”

Mr Holland said some of his highlights included the Dawn Chorus, comedian Milton Jones, feminist Bonnie Greer and the Youth Slam.