Tom Hodgkinson: Poetry and Idleness. Burgage Hall, Sunday 6th July.

The literature promoting Tom Hodgkinson's appearance at the Ledbury Poetry Festival promised a mix of "poetry and polemic", but the editor of anti-work magazine The Idler spent an hour trying to convince his audience that the two were in fact the same thing.

Author of books How to be Idle and How to be Free, and founder of National Unawareness Day, Hodgkinson devotes his energies (or lack of them) to campaigns against a modern work ethic that he sees stifling society. Sunday afternoon saw him attempting to source his convictions within poetic tradition. As a result, the leisurely, Romantic ramblings of Wordsworth and Coleridge and selections from ancient Daoist verse were transformed before us into alibis for universal laziness. Poetry, Hodgkinson argued, contains the subversive logic we all need to absorb in order to just - well, to just kick back.

Admittedly, I came as a sceptic. And I'm still inclined to agree with a member of the audience who turned Marx - quoted by Hodgkinson - against him by asking whether bourgeois idleness is surely only made possible by the continued labour of the working classes? Indeed, after admitting that his months spent on the dole were also consumed in writing articles for The Guardian, the dream of a laziness open to all did seem to crumble away.

But nonetheless, there is definitely something valid in Hodgkinson's theories. He repeatedly stressed that idleness should not be confused with apathy. It's all about rediscovering the autonomous self and its capabilities, he argued, rather than falling into an empty-headed stupor (we have Facebook for that, he'd maintain). What's more, his whole manner of speaking takes after his philosophy - he moves between the points of a vague structure at a leisurely and captivating pace, taking time to dwell on (rather than stumble over) countless digressions, always making his point but never forcing it. A reading of Keats' "An Ode to Indolence", for example, was fragmented by his own anecdotal footnotes - all of which added to, rather than detracted from, his effect as a public speaker. So, while I cannot say I was convinced, I can certainly say I was entertained.

We were also exposed to Hodgkinson's musical talents as he closed the event with ukulele renditions of John Lennon and Sex Pistols - a final reminder of the way words can be deployed against "the establishment."

Special mention should also be made to Slow Food Herefordshire, the local group who introduced Hodgkinson to the stage and treated us all to the delicious taste of regional cheese, Little Hereford.' "Blessed are the cheesemakers," indeed.

Scott Morris