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The world's leading poets read live on the South Bank. Southbank Centre's biennial Poetry International festival was founded by Ted Hughes in 1967. Southbank Centre’s biennial Poetry International festival, founded by Ted Hughes in 1967, returns this autumn for nine days of readings, music, translation, new commissions, free events and innovative live performances. Poets from more than twenty countries will congregate in the riverside venue’s halls and spaces - from the Purcell Room and the renowned Saison Poetry Library to the St Paul’s Roof Pavilion and the Central Bar in the Royal Festival Hall - to meet, debate and offer their poetic perspectives on a changing world. As the Cold War loomed large as inspiration for the first Poetry International, so the conflicts and shifting geo-political fault lines that impact on all our lives today, provide one of the central themes of the festival nearly half a century on. Particular focuses on poets and poetry from the Middle East - including the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and Syria - and Ireland, powerfully demonstrate the artform’s enduring ability to anticipate and envision change and transcend barriers of censorship, prejudice and conflict. Landscape and place make an impression on Poetry International in 2010, from re-imaginings of the landscape of the British Isles to the influence of ocean currents on global history.