There is plenty of poetry among the literary events at Hexham book festival in Northumberland next month. On Thursday 8 May Pam Ayres will be talking about her new collection, Doggedly Onward: A Life In Poems, including poems from the 1970s to the 2020s, and subjects such as dogs, wildlife, travel, mistakes, regrets, the heartbreak of leaving the family home, and ageing.

Saturday 10 May sees north-east poets Gillian Allnutt and Katrina Porteous on stage with their publisher, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Gillian Allnutt’s new collection, Lode, was written mostly during the Covid pandemic, which found her isolated in the former pit village of Esh Winning in Co Durham, her home for the past 30 years. Katrina Porteous’ most recent collection, Rhizodont, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize 2024, and against a backdrop of vast geological time and recent fossil-fuel burning history, explores current issues of social and environmental change.

On Wednesday 30 April there is an evening with Kate Fox, the book festival’s first fringe event. Kate will read from her latest book, On Sycamore Gap, and introduce writers and work written at a workshop earlier in the day.