Despite coming from very different backgrounds - Sean O'Brien grew up on the outskirts of Hull and John Kinsella half a world away alternating between farm and city life in Australia - both share remarkably similar views about poetry; particularly contemporary pastoral poetry and how it should be written.

Both are outstanding poets in their own right, both major prize-winners. John Kinsella, as you might expect from a Cambridge academic, albeit one whose peripatetic life-style sees him jetting around the globe in the role of poet, novelist, critic, publisher and journal editor, is very forthright in his view that all poetry is, or should be, political and that in writing the pastoral these days one must be ironic and, consequently, political.

His own poetry is not the world of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, with its romantic ideals. It is heavily influenced by the Australian landscape and the way this has been extensively altered and damaged by European incursion.

He contrasted the traditional English vision of the pastoral with a reading from the work of an Aboriginal poet who writes in a way that deconstructs the language of his 'oppressors' and reconstructs it in a form which forces people to rethink their view of reality,

Tyneside-based Sean O'Brien, winner of The Foreward Prize for Best Collection in 2001 with Downriver and one of the judges in this year's competition, is fascinated by life on the margins between town and countryside.

Quieter and more reflective, he nevertheless shares Kinsella's view that the pastoral stems from an idyllic idealisation by the city dweller.

Both agree that life in the real countryside may have just as many problems as urban living, it's just that they are not as immediately apparent against a backdrop that seems unchanged and unchanging. In this context, pastoral verse inspired by a city park or a close-up view of plants in a window box is just as legitimate a source of inspiration for the pastoral poet.

Although Edward Thomas' best-known work, Adlestrop, was the starting point for this discussion - the fourth in the festival's Talking Poetry series - the Dymock Poets' only look-in came at the end when Sean O'Brien was asked whether he agreed that they were really just townies playing at being countrymen. His answer, after much pause for reflection, that it didn't really matter so long as the poetry was good, was as neat a way of summing up a discussion as I've heard.

Mark Fisher