THE Curious Arts Festival returns to the New Forest this weekend.

From life drawing to midnight bat walks, pop-up fine dining and even a cricket

match no other festival offers anything dreamy, fun, eccentric and ultimately inimitable weekend.

There will be music from singer songwriter superstars such as this year’s headline John Newman, back on chart-topping form with brand new single Fire In Me and comedy will come from legendary stand ups from TV and radio and lightening-quick sketch groups, including Al Murray.

Acclaimed conceptual artist Robert Montgomery will encourage a state of poetic contemplation with a specially commissioned fire poem at 8.30pm tomorrow and official poet for the London Olympics, the extraordinary Lemn Sissay will be reading from his collected poems, Gold from a Stone.

Publisher New River Press, known for their elegant, surreal, and rebellious ‘page poetry’, curate a line up of over a dozen of their favourite poets and songwriters.

Join acclaimed writers in a weekend-long recital of TS Eliot’s revolutionary poem The Waste Land as festival curator Clare Conville leads authors and performers in reading all five parts, starting today.

For full details, visit: www.curiousartsfestival.com.