ORGANISERS of Ulverston's Word Market, the latest addition to an expanding national calendar of literary festivals, were congratulating themselves on a job well done this week.

The festival, designed to encourage new writers and develop new audiences for their work, was hailed as an "amazing success" by project co-ordinator Linda Graham.

"There is a perception of literary events that they are not for most people. That was the whole point of things like Pub Scripts the performance of plays in pubs it takes new writing to people and shows that there really is something for everybody. That is the strength of Word Market, we are demystifying literature and writing."

The two-week festival, which is now in its second year, started on February 4 and will draw to a close tomorrow (Saturday). It has included everything from a song-writing competition to a readers' conference discussing such matters as the literature festival phenomenon.

Ms Graham said the jewel in the crown of the events programme had proved to be Poem and a Pint on Saturday an evening of readings from local poets and Simon Armitage, one of the UK's leading literary luminaries with a career spanning poetry, broadcasting and novel writing.

"We had ten local poets performing with Simon Armitage. It raises their game and to perform with someone of his standing is just amazing. Pub Scripts has been really good too because it's given local writers the chance to showcase their work."

Following encouragement from the Arts Council, a bid is being put together to develop the festival over the next three years. But even if the bid is unsuccessful, Ms Graham said the area's many local writing, reading and drama groups that have been brought together by the last two festivals would stage another Word Market.

There are two events left on the Word Market 2004 calendar, including a performance of pub scripts by the Ulverston Outsiders tonight (Friday) at The Kings Arms, Ulverston, at 7.30pm, and a poetry walk with John Fox from Baycliff to Ulverston.

In addition, The Westmorland Gazette's website www.thisisthelakedistrict.co.uk in association with Word Market is running a short story and poetry contest. The deadline for entries is September 20 and full entry details can be found on the site.