Dead poets, "the undead" and living wordsmiths all feature in this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Running from July 4 to 13, the festival will be both a celebration of the present day and a glance back to the glories of the past.

When festival director Charles Bennett put together this year's programme, which was launched last Friday at the Burgage Hall, anniversaries and dates were much on his mind.

The year 2003 marks both the 400th anniversary of the close of the first Elizabethan era, a literary golden age, and the 50th anniversary of the death of Dylan Thomas.

Dr Bennett said: "People have said previously how they'd like to see events about the poets of the past, and we have responded to those demands."

The Elizabethan epoch, the time of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Spenser, will be recalled by The Queen's Garland, a celebration featuring expert Sir Roy Strong and professional actress Lucy Chalkley, at Eastnor Castle.

Miss Chalkley, a former member of LADS, will be on home ground for a reading that will include verse from Queen Elizabeth I herself.

The Poetry of Dylan Thomas is the title of a lecture in the Market Theatre from Swansea University academic John Goodby, and Dylan Thomas will be the subjct of one of eight workshops on important 20th Century poets, given by University of Birmingham academics.

Other names covered in the workshops are John Masefield, Edward Thomas, Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

Former Royal Shakespeare Company actress Ruth Rosen will remember Keats' Last Summer at the Burgage Hall on July 13.

The Shakespeare of Spain, Federico Garcia Lorca will be celebrated in two shows, one at the Market Theatre and the other at the Much Marcle manor house of Hellens.

Born Between Mirrors will feature not only the poetry of Lorca, but also flamenco dancing and Spanish guitar.

Dr Bennett's list of "musts" for the modern line-up includes Carol Ann Duffy, who will open the festival, the stand-up comedian and poet John Hegley and Wendy Cope, author of the best-selling Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis.

But Dr Bennett said: "I always hesitate to talk about 'must sees', because the must sees of the future come here too, and there is some unmissable talent."

He described performance poet Raman Mundair as "the new Benjamin Zephaniah, only female" and he also enthused about Henry Shukman, whose first collection Dr No's Garden is making critics sit up and take notice.

Between dead and alive poets is the realm of the undead, as Rosie Lugosi, versifier and Vampire Queen will prove in her Burgage Hall show that will not be for the faint-hearted!

Nicholas Parsons will be presenting of evening of cricket poetry while Captain Corelli's Mandolin author Louis de Bernieres will be joined by a flute trio for French music and poetry.

A fixture of the festival is the town party, being held on Saturday, July 5, in the High Street from 7pm till late. It features music from Raices Cubanas and Omar Puente, Baton Rouge and Philip Wells.

On a local level, The Ledbury Scribes are holding an open reading and there will also be an event organised by the Ledbury Lyricists.

Programmes are available now from Ledbury Tourist Information Centre, and the booking hotline is 0845 458 1743.

6 Vampire queen Rosie Lugosi.