Spring Poetry Festival in Grignan, Provence, France

After 2 hours discussing the local event for the French Spring Poetry Festival  in Grignan with two lovely French ladies and an American friend, I think this is what’s happening 🙂

I’ve accidentally suggested the theme for the whole festival, which will be ‘les chèvres’; goats and goat cheese 🙂 The lovely ladies liked my book ‘A Small Cheese in Provence’.

Mama Cherif (a French Algerian singer who lives in Grignan) wants to set two of my translated songs (Cabrel and Goldman from ‘One Sixth of a Gill’)  to music and sing them alongside the originals while I sit and look wise. She is so beautiful as well as so talented. I am hugely flattered. Here she is. 

I’m also taking part in the festival as one of the two writers at a ‘table ronde’, talking about translation; and, in another session, reading some of my work. In between times I’ll be nibbling goat cheese and drinking red wine.

There was a tricky moment when I was asked, ‘What do you usually have for aperos in an English poetry festival? Remembering the mud and the beer tent of one festival that haunts me still, I moved the discussion on quickly to local French produce!

If you’re on holiday in Provence, come and say hello. I’ll probably catch hypothermia but you only live once!