As far as I know – correct me if I’m wrong – the IRON Festivals are the only ones run by, and in celebration of a small press.
This all started in 1973 when we decided to celebrate IRON Press’ forty years of existence with a one-off festival in various non-traditional venues clustered round Cullercoats harbour front. The IRON Age Festival ran events in the local fish and chip, RNLI, Fishermen’s Mission, working men’s club and various other places. Famous writers who have been associated with the press – Ian McMillan, David Almond – rubbed shoulders with the many more obscuranti whose work we have lovingly supported. Audiences for Andy Croft’s reading from his book Great North were invited to run with Andy to the event three miles from St Mary’s Lighthouse. We sent poets out to sea in small fishing oats to write haiku. And we had loads of music.
It was an intriguing mix and the festival won the Best Event Tyneside category in The Journal Culture Awards. People seemed to like it so much we decided we would do a second one. Once a year however was too much for a small outfit such as IRON Press. We called the second one Eclectic IRON, and it took place in 2015. The venues remained more or less the same; oddball events included sticking writers on a rock for the duration of a tide. We decided on an al fresco musical fringe at which about half a dozen musicians played, and we hosted famous authors including Tony Harrison.
By 2017 the festival was called IRON in the Soul, with the likes of a literary cricket match, an Existential Breakfast, more Ian McMillan and midnight ghost stories in St Georges Church from our new anthology, Cold Iron. Now here’s festival four, the enigmatic titled IRON OR (June 20-23rd). There are 22 separate acts in the fringe, a late night festival club, renowned NE poets Katrina Porteous and Tom Pickard, two new literary books about Cullercoats, a brand new play set in Cullercoats, a literary quiz, a chance for new writers to get free feedback on their work, Clare in the Community creator Harry Venning, a second breakfast lecture and many talented literary obscuranti; fifteen separate events over four days and the events are still all clustered round the seafront at Cullercoats!
A few events are already sold out, but tickets left for most. Plus a lot of stuff that is free.
For those four days it’s a unique atmosphere round Cullercoats sea front. There’s even a special festival beer on sale from the wonderful Cullercoats Brewery. IRON is a small press and we run a small – though perfectly formed – festival.
Find more information at our website, and buy your tickets here. You can also buy tickets in various Cullercoats venues. See you there!
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.