The sunshine has really welcomed the crowds to Hay Festival 2026. Glorious bright days and sultry evenings are thronged with book readers, book bearers and every manner of literary lover. All are intent of meeting their author idols, soaking up the heady festival atmosphere, or strolling the short walk into town for a Castle visit, ice creams, boutiques, pubs, cafes and even more excellent book shops. Many meander back to the festival site via the Warren Walk, taking in the lush views of the River Wye. Yes, Hay is at it’s best and everyone is enjoying it.
Hay Writers’ Circle are delighted to once again be at Hay Festival, and we are so grateful to the Festival for it’s continued support of local writers. This year we will be reading alfresco in the Bookshop Garden Marquee at a FREE drop-in event (event number 394). The theme of our readings will be “The Well Of Words”, original writing by our members on poems, books and even lullabies which have inspired or influenced us. Perhaps our own small nod celebrating the National Year of Reading.
We do hope you can can come along, enjoy our words, and stay for a chat afterwards.
Poetry Competition 2026 – 2nd and 3rd placed poems.
Many congratulations to Hilary Watkins and David Shields who won 2nd and 3rd places respectively in our 2026 Poetry Competition as judged by Lesley Saunders. First place was won by Livia Frisby Parker Clements, and her winning poem, “Advice from the Widow Next Door” appears in our previous article.
Hilary Watkins – “Home“, 2nd Place.
“I think the best way to get to know someone is to ask them what they love. Words are number four on my list – one place behind silence. Poetry does both well I think. And both feature highly in my choice of work, the silence, when dog sitting and gardening and, previously, words, when storytelling or working with young adults. Whatever the paid work, I make space for writing both poetry and adult fiction.
I love sheep, only fractionally less than words, I am a sheep farmers daughter. I was raised and live in the foothills of the Black Mountains, yet work has taught me to travel well, to live out of a suitcase or inside a book. Upon my return, I notice that words are, most often, musical sounds exchanged in the sheep shed or ‘on the road’. Perhaps this is why I appreciate Mary Oliver’s emphasis in her book, A Hand Book of Poetry, that ‘to make a poem, we must make sounds. Not random sounds, but chosen sounds’. So my thanks go to the Hay Writers Circle, for giving each entry in the competition an opportunity to fly from the page.”
Home by Hilary Watkins
Home, for me, is more a way of being
than a place. I can do it in many places but not all.
That way of being is in emptiness
where something gives –
and my gaze alights and lingers on spaces
between the branches of wintering trees,
and the few leaves, still fast and
holding their colour green,
and in the foreground, on the windowsill, the arrangement of
three onions in a bowl, intoxicating and
inspired in their wine-red chafed skins,
making counterpoint with ivory bulbs of garlic.
David Shields – “Getting to Grips with the Resistometer” & “Change of Use”, Joint 3rd Place
David Shields lives in Crickhowell and works in Brecon Library, where he organises regular literary events and group sessions. He has an MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University, and has published poems, essays and reviews in numerous publications. He is a multiple Spectator writing competition winner, and won the inaugural Knighton Poetry Prize in 2025.
Getting to Grips with the Resistometer by David Shields
Like old men tottering on sticks
We walk one pace then plant the spikes
Wait for the registering click:
We are doing geophysics.
March has its ‘lion’ head on.
We bow before the wind-sown rain,
Intent on the reading and the line,
Our progress boustrophedon.
At the line’s end I pass the yoke
To my partner, follow in her wake
As she now wields the virtual rake,
Piling data in a tidy stack.
The archaeologist also follows
As the terrain now dips and narrows,
With the odd word steadying the harrow.
At last the foursquare field is furrowed.
Later we huddle, as if for warmth,
Round the laptop, watch the solid graph
Leap amazingly to life:
Waves of stone, locked in the frozen earth.
Change of Use by David Shields
(Land acquired by Orchard – construction site hoarding)
If only.
If this were a greening
for a gauze of grey,
laid like a poultice
on the wounded land.
If, for a web of glass and steel,
dense trees would aggregate
a mesh of shade,
woody girders pleached and spliced.
Book Now for our Fiction Workshop with Holly Müller
There is still time to book your place on our exciting Fiction Writing Workshop with Holly Müller. Holly is one of the Hay Festival 2026 Writers at Work and we are thrilled that she is leading this dynamic creative writing workshop on Tuesday 9th June. Details about Holly, and the workshop can be found below. A light lunch is included, so please make us aware of any dietary requirements when booking. Please book your place via email to our Chair, Corinne Harris: corinneonwye@gmail.com
HOLLY MÜLLER
“Holly Müller is a writer and musician living in the Bannau Brycheiniog. Her debut novel My Own Dear Brother (Bloomsbury, 2016) was Waterstones’ Book of the Month and garnered positive reviews in the Guardian, Independent, Sunday Times, Sydney Morning Herald and more. Her short stories are published in Rarebit (Parthian Books, 2013) and New Welsh Fiction (Seren Books, 2015). Holly achieved a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales where she taught undergraduates. Holly has written for national press as well as prominent online publications and has performed at Cheltenham, Hay, Laugharne, and Cardiff Literature Festivals.”
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