Ronald Blythe, the very first speaker at Poetry-next-the-Sea, writes in his Out of the Valley (1998): "We set out for Wells-next-the-Sea, Richard (Mabey) the naturalist, Kit (Wright) the poet, and myself, to inaugurate the new literature festival...
"Little brick houses, hospitably arranged round greens, and fast filling up with weekenders, with lilacs and laburnums waving over high walls, and with the locals chatting their way into the local high school to hear us read."
Afterwards he wrote: "Enchanting. I've been to all our main literature festivals but none like yours. There was an underlying intimacy which is hard to describe, a kind of interlocking of experience."
The group of local people who met in a garden one sunny September afternoon the previous year felt that Wells-next-the-Sea would be an ideal place to found such a festival. In those couple of hours our credo was established; we would ask the best poets to Wells; we would take poetry into local schools; we would encourage local poets by including them in the programme and by providing a workshop with one of the visiting poets; we would arrange events in places other than Wells; there would be music, exhibitions, walks; we would bring people to Wells who might not otherwise have come.