'The path to poetry brings enormous riches' says Pelé Cox who has launched events at Ludlow Assembly Rooms

“Poetry is a great equaliser for me, everyone has a voice and that’s the most important thing,” she says.

Pelé has recently launched a new series of events at Ludlow Assembly Rooms with the aim of bringing poetry to new audiences – and inspiring new writers to pick up their pen.

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Guests so far have included Dean Emeritus of Canterbury, Robert Willis – who spoke about his love of poetry and spoken word, and Rachel Spence, whose poems explore themes including time, absence, quantum physics, motherhood and water.

On April 24, she will welcome BAFTA-nominated, award-winning writer and broadcaster, Lemn Sissay who will be reading from his award-winning poetry collection, Let the Light Pour In.

After graduating from the University of Nottingham with a BA degree in Art History BA, Pelé gained a masters in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, tutored by Andrew Motion. 

She was inspired to start writing poetry while living in Rome. 

“I lived in a professor’s study, she had a mezzanine and a big white table surrounded by art history books.

“I took Seamus Heaney’s Oxford Lectures the Redress of Poetry and read them every morning at 6am – the history of poetry and its potential were spread out before me,” she explains.

“The path of poetry brings enormous riches, it’s like learning a very difficult instrument, if you dedicate yourself to it, teach it, write it, read it, perform it, talk about it, you kind of become a representative of its value.

“You have to give your inner life to it. And that impacts on your external experience and the things that happen to you. 

“I have had a pretty interesting life – all driven by poetry. It has taken me to some interesting places. 

“But I am also an innovator, I create, I make the ideas of how I can bring poetry into the conversation – I created the posts at TATE, RA, BSR, John Murray. Pretty much everything I do I appoint myself. And I never thought I would become a filmmaker and that poetry and my performances would take me to filming,” she explains.

Pelé went on to become the Poet in Residence at TATE in 2008 and at the Royal Academy of Arts from 2010 to 2012 where she explored how poetry contributed to the understanding and accessibility of art. 

Other posts have included Writer in Residence at The British School at Rome, at Keats-Shelley House in Rome and at John Murray in London.

She has taught on the creative writing MA at the University of Westminster and at the British School in Rome, Stanford University, Unilever, Fulcrum Consulting and at Gather in Ludlow. 

Pelé has also directed a film about John Keats, through the British School in Rome and British Institute of Florence, and a second film, Dreamboat, about Percy Bysshe Shelley.

“Shelley was one of the greatest political voices in poetic history. His poem the Mask Of Anarchy sets the bar for how to use language to create disturbance and shock,” says Pelé. Other poets she admires include Alfred Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver.

There will be a screening of “Dreamboat” and “Lift me Up I am Dying” at Ludlow Assembly Room as part of Pelé's Poetry Series on May 29.

Pelé has been pleased by the positive response to the events. “I wanted to do something for the town to develop poetry and performance with a combination of well-known and not so well-known poets. It’s been really well-supported. It would be nice to inspire more people to write poetry and prose.” 

Her advice for anyone who wants to get started is to: “Buy an anthology. Find the poets you like inside and start to read about their stories and lives; it helps us to look differently at our own. Find out more about them online, learn one of their poems and recite it in the pub or when you are waiting for a train. 

“Find a group of poetry lovers go to events like mine. Poetry is an eternal and living community. Come to Gather and do one of my classes. But most of all read it, look beyond the well-trodden pathway for the ones that speak to you privately, not the ones that you are told to like.”

To book tickets, see ludlowassemblyrooms.co.uk/event/peles-poetry-series-lemn-sissay