Really exciting news! The good people at Reel Festivals have announced their full programme of events for Reel Iraq 2013, which runs from 21-25 March all across the UK, including dates for the calendars of the citizens of London, Dumfries, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. There’s a huge amount going on, with short film showings, music, poetry and writing workshops, really worth making a note of and coming along to support some of the best artists Iraq has to share with us.

We’re hitting the road in a massive poetic convoy with our Found in Translation team, featuring Ghareeb Iskander, Sabreen Kadhim, Zahir Mousa, and Awezan Nouri, our friends John Glenday, Jen Hadfield, William Letford, and Krystelle Bamford, plus so many massively talented UK-based poets joining us along the way, including George Szirtes, Tom Pow, Vicki Feaver, Miriam Gamble and Joe Dunthorne, to name a scant few. It’s going to be one week-long celebration of poems and the humans who write them, we’ll be exhausted and euphoric and we invite you to do likewise.

PLUS if you can make it up to Raploch Community Campus on Monday 25th, we’re throwing an intensely unique Golden Hour to bring this year’s Reel Iraq to a close, featuring all the aforementioned Iraqi and Scottish poets, short films, and music from Billy Liar, Hailey Beavis and others. You will pause, ponder, clap and sing along.

Can’t wait to get all this underway, can’t wait to see you there, and to put you in the mood, here’s Reel Festival’s very own theatrical trailer.