Last night we enjoyed the first helping of PASTA for 2026 – and what a feast it was! We’ll be honest, there was some concern in the PPP camp about whether anyone would turn up with an offering on the first half theme of ‘creases’, but the good people of Wolverhampton (and Birmingham!) delivered admirably. We had poems featuring pandas, underwear, folds in the space/time continuum, and why ironing your clothes doesn’t matter when the world is on fire.
The second half brought us song. We can’t think when we last had an acapella contribution to one of our PASTA events, but Daisy’s contribution was so good that we were graced with another musical offering just a few minutes later. Songs are like buses, it seems. You wait forever for one, and then they all turn up at once. We had poems from PASTA first-timers, and PASTA old hands, and the joy of them properly warmed our cockles on a dreich February night.
Dave Pitt was absent with a head cold. Hopefully he’ll be full of beans by this weekend, when we turn our attention to Wolves Lit Fest – there’s events for everyone, whatever your fancy, and we hope to see you there. And talking of beans… the theme for the first half of next month’s PASTA is ‘farts’. Thanks for that, Mogs and the gods of chance who decided that his would be the slip of paper drawn from the pint glass of suggestion.
We can’t wait to hear what you do with that. It’ll be suitably highbrow, we’re sure.
Steve Pottinger
4th February 2026