ONE poet appearing at Ledbury Poetry Festival this year won't have too far to travel.

Jonathan Edwards, who won the festival's poetry competition last year with his poem Servant Minding a Seat for his Master Before a Performance of The Rivals, teaches English at Haberdashers Monmouth School for Girls and lives in Crosskeys near Newport.

He also won the Costa Book Award for his debut collection, My Family and Other Superheroes.

"I've always written about Wales and Welsh national identity, and my first poem was about my experience of being taught Welsh at school"

His prize-winning poem, however, marked a departure, with teaching providing the inspiration: "I was teaching The Rivals at A level - and researching the historical context, we found that in the 18th century theatre people would send their servants to sit in a seat to reserve it for them, slipping in at the last minute and the servant would never get to see the play. It struck me as a wonderful metaphor for class and the relationships between classes. It was the first time that a poem seemed to come out of teaching instead of being apart from it."

Competitions have been a big part of Jonathan's life in poetry: "I entered a lot of competitions because, living in the part of the world that I do, I was not really embedded in a literary community, so they were important in figuring out where I stood in terms of poetry."

Having visited both Hay Festival and Ledbury Poetry Festival as a keen reader, this year he finds himself on the other side of the stage. "I absolutely loved Hay," he says. "I'd been going for about 20 years and a lot of the poets I saw, like Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell, are part of the reason I write, so to be standing on a similar stage was a very surreal experience. I had the whole family there, including my dad.I have done 40-odd readings since the book came out and he's been to 39!

"A lot of the poems are about him anyway, but we have had this amazing sequence of cross-country poetry festivals which has been wonderful for our relationship."

Jonathan will be on stage reading his prize winning poem in an event hosted by Ian McMillan as well as running a series of one-to-ones with poets.

"It's really nice because a few years ago I was going back and forth to Ledbury having people look at my poems!" he says. "Daljit Nagra gave me some amazing feedback."