Ten days till 2024 bids us farewell, and it only seems like yesterday that we were making grand plans about what we’d do this year…. The other night, over a few beers, we scribbled down a list of everything we actually managed to do over the past twelve months. It’s pretty impressive (if we say so ourselves).
Yes We Cant (that’s our monthly poetry night, if you didn’t know) celebrated its 7th birthday in June – Liz Berry headlined! – and is still an online event. One of our priorities in 2025 is finding a venue with full disabled access and excellent wi-fi so we can start running in-person hybrid events. Watch this space for more news on that.
We’ve also kept serving regular helpings of PASTA (our open-mic night) at Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton. Between that and Yes We Cant, we reckon we’ve provided at least two hundred open-mic opportunities over the year. You couldn’t ask for a better snapshot of the health of our local grass-roots poetry scene!
On top of that, we’ve run poetry slams in Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, and Ironbridge. We’ve worked on poetry projects with Good Shepherd in Wolverhampton, and Caldmore Community Gardens in Walsall, and offered Poetry on Demand at BlackBerry Fair in Shropshire. We took Wolverhampton poets up to Morecambe Poetry Festival for a showcase (they smashed it), and this autumn we set up a new writers’ group in Willenhall which is already going from strength to strength.
Away from poetry – but very much in touch with our passion for championing our region – we ran an oral history project about the Tavern in the Town rock pub in Wolverhampton, collecting stories and anecdotes and memories, working with photographer Nicole Lovell, distributing 2000 copies of a free newspaper, and putting on an exhibition in Wolverhampton city centre. All the material we collected is now with Wolverhampton City Archives, but you can see what we did here.
We’ll be winding down a little over the festive period, but never quite stopping. We’ve entries to the Wolves Lit Fest poetry comp to log – that closes as the year ends – while on Boxing Day we’ll be drawing names out of the PPP Hat of Poetry Chance to see who’s going to be part of the Wolves Lit Fest slam. If you fancy taking part, you’ve got till midnight on Xmas Eve to get in touch. Oh, and tickets for the slam make excellent Xmas presents, if you’re in the market for last-minute shopping.
The festival itself runs from 31 Jan – 2 Feb and has a host of great events (we’re delighted that Hollie McNish gig is already sold out!). We’ll be there all weekend, running the Fringe Room, putting on Stars of Slam, and looking after the Writers’ Hub. If you pop along (and why wouldn’t you?) be sure to come and say hallo.
Wishing you all the very best over the festive season, however you (do or don’t) celebrate it. And may 2025 be good to every last one of you. You deserve it.
Ho Ho Ho
PPP