The Monkey Poet will be the warm-up act for this year’s Huddersfield literature festival, taking place from 14-17 March. In his pre-festival performance on 7 March the performance poet plays 16 great writers, from Homer to Oscar Wilde. After the break his stand-up poetry show tackles democracy, religion, homophobia, pornography, the blogosphere, drugs and Atos assessments. Tickets are £3/£2, Café Ollo, Media Centre, 7 Northumberland Street, Huddersfield.

On Sunday 17 March, there is back-to-back poetry from 2pm-5pm at Huddersfield art gallery. It starts with The Yorkshire Roots of Ted Hughes, in which local historians, writers and personal friends of Ted Hughes discuss how his poetry was inspired by Yorkshire.

This is followed by Byron: Elegy and Celebration, a performance piece by Andrew Mitchell with cellist accompaniment, and then Michael Stewart will be reading from and talking about his new poetry collection Couples.

The festival’s director, Michelle Hodgson, said: “West Yorkshire is a vibrant area for poetry groups. Our poetry offering this year is both exciting and varied and we hope that there will be something for everyone.”

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