IMAGE Chen Siqi 陈思琦 after Ma Yongbo 马永波
from her graphic poem created in response to the poem ‘A White Horse Runs Towards Me’ by Ma Yongbo 马永波.
Image: Ma Yongbo 马永波 Harbin, China, 2000, when he wrote ‘A White Horse Runs Towards Me’ published in his poetry collection Untied Boat (China International Broadcasting Press, 2024)
“ the Chinese characters above my head say “Cigarettes” and the two rows of 6 Characters say “there is nothing here” , so I closed my eyes and let the thieves act freely, there is nothing anyway”
Ma Yongbo 马永波
A white horse runs towards me by Ma Yongbo 马永波
A white horse runs towards me
brown forest turban unfolds
A white horse runs towards me
the earth slowly begins to tilt
a silver thread runs out from the darkness
A white horse runs towards me
seeds scattered in the soil jump back to cracked palms
a broken horn returns to the unicorn’s head
A white horse runs towards me
fallen leaves in spring return to the top of the tree
the apple turns back into a flower, back into a thin fist
A white horse runs towards me
gradually falls into pieces while running
the deceased sits up, still a little dazed
A white horse runs towards me
I don’t know if it’s early spring or autumn
I suddenly become a group of people, blooming like flowers
A white horse runs towards me
it goes straight through me
like walking through a door that’s still shaking
English Co-translation by Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 2024
Image: Wang Zhihui 汪智慧 after Ma Yongbo 马永波
Ma Yongbo 马永波 reading his poem https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ge2vYpEqIS0
Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 reading Ma Yongbo 马永波 at Cambridge Poetry Festival, introduced by Angus Allman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBw3NjKWhDQ
一匹白马向我奔来 马永波
一匹白马向我奔来
褐色的树林头巾一样展开
一匹白马向我奔来
大地缓慢地开始倾斜
从幽暗中倾倒出一条银线
一匹白马向我奔来
撒到泥土里的种子跳回到开裂的手掌
折断的角回到独角兽的头上
一匹白马向我奔来
泉水里的落叶回到树顶
苹果变回成花，变回成瘦小的拳头
一匹白马向我奔来
它在奔跑中渐落形骸
死者坐起，还有些茫然
一匹白马向我奔来
不知是初春，还是秋天
我突然变成了一群人，如花怒放
一匹白马向我奔来
它径直穿过了我
像穿过一扇还在震颤的门
2000
Images: Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 and Ma Yongbo 马永波 , June 2025
Image: Fan Xinyi 樊欣怡 after Ma Yongbo 马永波
The CAMBRIDGE POETRY FESTIVAL event, READINGS and art exhibition, 21st June 2025, marked the culmination of the inaugural collaborative project between the newly established Cambridge Poetry Festival charity and visual communication students at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University, setting the stage for a dynamic and innovative approach to the arts in the region.
“READINGS 2025 was a great success! We wanted to use this event to set the festival on the right path, to put forward a manifesto of sorts. We opened a gallery of art and poetry in the middle of the busiest shopping centre in the city knowing that by bringing the work of the students and poets into the every day lives of the people of Cambridge, someone, even one person could stumble upon it and feel something in response to the works. Poetry is often looked at as exclusive, or ‘not for me’, but it needn’t be like that. That’s really what we aim to do with the festival. Our goal is to bring together people who already love poetry and are involved in the community we have in Cambridge and to inspire and encourage those who want to be a part of that but for whatever reason feel as though they can’t. I found community through poetry after moving here in 2022 and that’s what the festival will foster through its events this year and the full festival next year.
This project, being the first for the festival, was designed to broaden the traditional boundaries of poetry, redefining what poetry can be and how it is experienced by both the poets and those who encounter their work. In working with the students, we aimed to encourage an exploration of the intersection between poetry and visual art and to create a platform where these different art forms can meet, overlap, enhance one another, and produce something new.
Working with the Cambridge School of Art has been an inspiring and formative first step in the festival’s goal to create partnerships with Cambridge’s rich network of institutions. Through these partnerships, we aim to weave the charity into the vibrant tapestry of Cambridge in the hopes of building a lasting legacy of poetic innovation and engagement. The charity will create and embrace opportunities for future projects which will celebrate and champion creativity, inclusivity, unity, and the accessibility of art. This initial project has been a vital first step in this.
The Cambridge Poetry Festival is laying the groundwork for a movement that invites everyone to experience and contribute to the art of poetry in new and meaningful ways.
Thank you to everybody who came to the fund-raising gallery event on the 21st June. Special thanks, of course, go to all the students without whose art this exhibition would never have been possible. Thanks also to their lecturers, Nick Jeeves and Al Hall for their guidance in producing the wonderful work and curating the exhibition; Duncan Ganley for his volunteered time in advising on and hanging the show; Duncan Large and Karin Eklund for lending their time to pick the artworks we would exhibit; Dan Leighton, for allowing up the use of his amp and microphone so that the poets could be heard; and, of course, to each of the poets for sharing their work, time, and expertise with the students.
Readings featured works by 24 students from the Cambridge School of Art in response to and in collaboration with 9 poets from Cambridge and elsewhere. We learnt so much from the project and can’t wait to see you for READINGS 2026!
Angus Allman, Director, Cambridge Poetry Festival
Angus Allman, read ‘Poem for a Non-Genetic Descendant…’ by Bhanu Kapil, who was unable to attend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhanu_Kapil
Angus Allman, is a poet and translator based outside Cambridge. His poems appeared in the first issue of the Cambridge Poetry Magazine and is studying for a masters in literary translation. He is planning the upcoming Cambridge Poetry Festival which will happen in 2026.
Images: Angus Allman, Director, Cambridge Poetry Festival
Project Overview
9 poets, Nia Broomhall, Tristram Fane Saunders, Nadia Lines, Ma Yongbo, Helen Pletts, Stav Poleg, Freya Sacksen, Bhanu Kapil, Jon Stone, Harriet Truscott.participated in the project, working with 24 MA Illustration and MA Graphic Design students and their Tutors Nick Jeeves and Al Hall at Cambridge School of Art, ARU. Each poet’s role was to aid a small group of students in producing individual art work responding to their selected poem. To develop and realise a piece of visual work in which the relationships between text, words, voice, imagery and authorship are explored through the visual expression of language: form, medium and location; lettering, mark-making and materials; rhythm, space, and image-text relationships; etc.
Image: Nick Jeeves, Nicholas Jeeves, MA (CSM), FHEA
Senior Lecturer; Course Director, MA Graphic Design
Cambridge School of Art
–
Editor, Ruskin Arts Publications
Associate Editor, The Public Domain Review
“In their second trimester at ARU, MA Graphic Design and MA Illustration students undertake a module entitled ‘Visual Text’, in which we ask them to engage with ‘the visual and sensual properties of text’.
And so when Angus invited us to partner with him — and with his newly-revived Cambridge Poetry Festival — we felt it was an ideal match.
The original Festival flourished from 1975 to 1985. Founded by the poet Richard Berengarten, it was conceived to be ‘diverse, innovative and international’ and to combine as many aspects of poetic art as possible. Central to this vision was a desire to create new environments where poetry could meet other forms of creative expression, complementing and intensifying one another.
That vision, explained Angus, would be sustained with this collaborative project, with 24 young visual artists responding to nine very different poetic voices.
And so we began, with each student assigned a poem. Working closely with the poet, they then set about creating a rich variety of visual responses, culminating in a visual outcome that would be exhibited in a public space.
Over the course of twelve weeks the students produced a huge volume of work. And so when judging the work for exhibition we chose to focus on works-in-progress as much as outcomes — not just as images created along the way, but as evidence of the power of imaginative thought, and of the creative mind at serious play.
It’s been such a pleasure and a privilege for us to partner with this new version of the Cambridge Poetry Festival, which we hope will continue to grow and evolve over the next few years. We are already planning our next event together and are thrilled at the prospect of what we might come up with next.
I’d like to thank the students for all their efforts in producing the work for this project, and for looking after their exhibition so well. Very special thanks to Duncan Ganley for his wisdom and assistance in hanging the show. Huge thanks to our panel of judges, including Karin Eklund (ARU) and Duncan Large (UEA) for their patience, enthusiasm and commitment in selecting 100 images from over 1000. And to the wonderful Julie Kervadec, who afforded us such a fantastic exhibition space in the Grand Arcade — merci beaucoup!” Nick Jeeves
PROJECT TUTORS
Nicholas Jeeves
Al Hall
NICHOLAS JEEVES
Nicholas is a designer, writer, and senior lecturer at Cambridge School of Art, ARU. He is also an associate editor for The Public Domain Review. His website: www.nicholasjeeves.com
AL HALL
Al is a freelance illustrator and designer, and associate lecturer at Cambridge School of Art, ARU. He also works at Cambridge University Press. His website: www.waxonpaper.co.uk
STUDENTS
For Ma Yongbo 马永波:
Chen Siqi 陈思琦
Fan Xinyi 樊欣怡
Wang Zhihui 汪智慧
For Harriet Truscott:
Xiaoou Yu
Guanye Chen
For Stav Poleg:
Yixin Chen
Jon Nicholson
Yuhui Han
For Nadia Lines:
Xiru Lin
Leah Li
Lydia Liu
For Nia Broomhall:
Zhaochi Lyu
Jizhou Tian
For Jon Stone:
Ruge Liu
Martha Duke
For Tristram Fane Saunders:
Xin Sheng
Ziqi Weng
Sarah Pooley
For Bhanu Kapil:
Xinran Xu
Zhao Yan
Haifei Yuan
For Freya Sachsen:
Taiwo Dehinsilu
Jihui Peng
Yuan Zhang
Richard Berengarten, Cambridge Poetry Festival Founder back in 1975, with Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 and in 2025, with an image from the art book designed by Fan Xinyi 樊欣怡.
Richard shared a delightful tale from the early Cambridge festival days of him taking Alan Ginsberg to see the original work of William Blake, in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge because “Ginsberg loved Blake”.
Richard Berengarten on The Cambridge Poetry Festival: 35 years after
“In setting up the biennial Cambridge Poetry Festival (cpf), I wanted it to be diverse, innovative and international. The first cpf took place in 1975 and the last in 1985. In that decade, there were six large events, as well as a Fringe in 1983.1 Here I focus on some of the factors that went into making and shaping of the first event, including its mechanics, followed by a tentative appraisal of its achievements and limitations.2 My own needs for self-distance and self-criticism are salient in writing this short account. When I conceived the first festival in 1973, I was 29 years old. Apart from the fact that hindsight may bespurious and its claims to insight fallible, as the founder of cpf I may not be the best person to evaluate it. The CPF grew out of the expansiveness and fluidity in the Anglophone intellectual and artistic world, specifically in poetry”
Richard Berengarten, ‘The Cambridge Poetry Festival: 35 years after’, Cambridge Literary Review, I/1 (Michaelmas, 2009), pp. 148–60.
https://cambridgeliteraryreview.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/berengartenclr1.pdf
Images : Early newspaper cuttings belonging to Richard Berengarten
Image: Chen Siqi 陈思琦, Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 and Fan Xinyi 樊欣怡
Image: Chen Siqi 陈思琦, graduate, Cambridge Art School, Anglia Ruskin University
Image: Wang Zhihua 汪智慧, graduate, Cambridge Art School, Anglia Ruskin University
Image: Fan Xinyi 樊欣怡, graduate, Cambridge Art School, Anglia Ruskin University
Image : Jon Stone, poet, reading ‘Another Labyrinth’
Image: Freya Sacksen, poet reading ‘The Asylum’
Image: Tristram Fane Saunders, Poet reading ‘Under’
Image: Harriet Truscott, poet reading ‘Finis Terre’
Image: Nadia Lines, poet, reading ‘Nuns’
Nia Broomhall, poet, reading ‘Folly’
Stav Poleg read her poem ‘Film’
All images under their individual copyright © to either Angus Allman, Nick Jeeves, and Ma Yongbo 马永波
.