Seven poets will be reading from an anthology of poetry inspired by the chalk landscape of the South Downs on the opening night of Winchester poetry festival (October 7-9) next month. Winchester is a gateway to the South Downs National Park. The festival’s artistic co-director, Keiren Phelan, said: “The Downs have poets strung along its length and breadth, from Edward Thomas to GK Chesterton. Our aim is to celebrate contemporary poets who live, or have lived, in the area.”

Curated by Stephanie Norgate, reader in creative writing at the University of Chichester, and herself a poet who lives in Midhurst, the event will mark the launch of Chalk Poets. Out of the 21 poems in the anthology, all but four are new and written for the collection. Stephanie Norgate said: "Some poems draw on myth and legend, some on personal experience, some on history, but all evoke an ancient landscape in a modern world.”

Keiren Phelan added that it was hoped that the poems could form part of a longer-term project to create a permanent South Downs poetry trail. “It would be wonderful to see how we could embed these and other poems into the fabric of the Downs – but that’s an ambition for the future,” he said.

The seven Chalk Poets are Stephanie Norgate, Hannah Brockbank, Lydia Fulleylove, Kate Miller, Zoe Mitchell, Steven O’Brien and Colette Sensier. They will be reading on Friday 7 October, from 5-6.30pm in Winchester Discovery Centre’s performance hall.

There will be an example of poetry embedded into the landscape on Saturday morning at the biennial festival when the Oxford professor of poetry, Simon Armitage, teams up again with lettercarver Pip Hall to discuss their collaboration on the Stanza Stones trail across 45 miles of the Pennines in West Yorkshire.

Other leading poets appearing at the festival include Roger McGough, Michael Laskey, Kim Moore, Sinead Morrissey, Frances Leviston, Ian Duhig, Sophie Hannah, Iain Galbraith, Chris McCabe, Shazea Quraishi, Deryn Rees-Jones, Choman Hardi, Bernard O’Donoghue, Jane Draycott, Mimi Khalvati, Helen Mort, Jo Shapcott, Kei Miller, Inua Ellams, and Sarah Howe. Full details