I hear from a friend of a friend that John Berkavitch, this year’s poet-in-residence at Glastonbury Festival 2025, will be performing a newly minted poem on the Greenpeace stage before Libertine Pete(r) Doherty takes the stage for a solo performance.
Making the short walk across from the Circus Big Top, it proves to be a solid tip-off when Berkavitch is introduced. He has time for just a single poem – a poem for the workers of Glastonbury, who make up a huge proportion of the nearly quarter of a million people who call this place home for one weekend in June.
Berkavitch first performed at the festival 20 years ago, so he is no stranger to the festival and its workers. Ahead of the weekend, he had said, “I am incredibly excited to be returning to the farm this year with a personal mission to bring poetry to as many people as possible.”
There’s a big crowd here in anticipation of Doherty, so he is certainly reaching the masses with his poem, Here’s to You, Glastonbury.
To an appreciative crowd, he talks of “the crafters and the painters / And the fencers and the traders” and of “To the clean-up crews who do the loos, you really put the effort in / To the food vendors and recycling collectors / Stewards and the litter pickers.”
As the list goes on, the gravity of the operation on Worthy Farm to bring a festival together becomes clear. He finishes, saying, “See this is a festival that was built from actions / And every action is an act of love / It would be for nothing if not for you / So here’s to you, for showing up.”
Hear, hear, I say.
Read John Berkavitch’s Here’s to You, Glastonbury and the rest of his 2025 poems here
