Dear Poets and Friends of The McGregor Poetry Festival,

As most of you are aware, our annual festival has proved to be both very popular and successful. This is undoubtedly due to, not only a passionate and committed committee, but also the warm-hearted and enthusiastic support of our family of poets and performers. Your passion and your loyalty remain the ground of our being.

Earlier this month, our committee held its first general meeting since our successful festival of November 2022. At the meeting, it was unanimously decided that we take a break and not hold a festival this year, but rather put our energies into envisioning going forward into 2024.

The reason for our decision is twofold.

In the first place, having run Temenos for 25 years, I would like this year to treat myself to a sabbatical. This means I will hopefully find the time and space to indulge in some of my own creative pursuits.

More importantly however, we sense that we need to step back and reflect on what has worked well in the past, and how best we might go forward into the next decade of our festival, with special regard to attracting young people. With ten festivals under our belt, we see a timeous opportunity to evaluate and reset our mission and our vision. In order to keep our event alive and flourishing, change and reimagining are essential.

Although we will not hold a full festival this year, we will still celebrate poetry. For poets and lovers of poetry who would enjoy returning to McGregor over the November weekend, we will launch the 2022 anthology.

Over fifty poets are featured in the anthology, and those who are present will read their published poems at a wine and cheese function to be held at Temenos. On the Saturday night we will host a concert of poetry and music. Details to be announced.

In order to reimagine the festival, we very much welcome YOUR suggestions and ideas as to how we might best continue to serve poetry in South Africa. Please let us have your feedback and your creative input which will be invaluable to the process. Furthermore, if any of you wish to be involved in the coordinating, planning or programming of Festival 2024, we would love to hear from you. So, if you feel inspired to come on board, please email us at temenos@lando.co.za. The subject heading should be REIMAGINING 2024 & YOUR SURNAME

I look forward to hearing from you, and to seeing you at our Anthology celebration over the weekend of 17-18 November this year.

With warm wishes

Billy