We are delighted to welcome back to the festival two of the finest contemporary poets writing in English. Sean O’Brien is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and 2007 recipient of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award. His first six individual poetry collections have all won awards, most recently The Drowned Book, which won both the 2007 Forward and T S Eliot Prizes. His new collection, November, is the Poetry Book Society Summer Choice and shortlisted for the 2011 T S Eliot Prize. John McAuliffe was born in Kerry and now teaches poetry at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. His first book, A Better Life, was shortlisted for a Forward Prize in 2002, and his third collection, Of All Places, has received a PBS Recommendation for autumn 2011.