This year at Crunch: the art and philosophy festival at Hay, Picador poet Rachael Boast will be getting to the heart of poetry’s power to awaken us to the universe’s mystery in ‘I Think Therefore Iamb’, questioning whether poetry is a release from the emotional hinterlands of real life, or a means of enriching them.

The festival, running from the 18th–20th November 2011, will be host to an impressive range of cultural, artistic and intellectual figures. From Hans Ulrich Obrist “the most powerful man in the international art world’ (Guardian) to Susan Hiller, fresh from her retrospective at the Tate earlier this year, the Crunch 2011 speakers will debate and engage with this year’s theme, ‘Awake in the Universe’.

Tickets to these events are available here.