Last night, just five days into the year, we held our first poetry event of 2025. Yes We Cant, on Zoom. And because we were still stumbling out of the festive season, stuffed with mince pies and awash with Baileys and mulled wine, we had a collective read-around, with everyone getting the opportunity to read a piece of their work. That meant twenty-four different voices, all sharing their words to an appreciative audience. It’s the beauty of poetry. It’s what we love about what we do.
It also gave us the opportunity to share some good news. Each calendar year, PPP chooses a local charity to support. We do this because we believe poetry doesn’t – and shouldn’t – exist in a bubble, but needs to be involved in its local community. Over the course of the year, we raise money for the charity by putting a small self-imposed tax on our own work, but also by pooling all the shrapnel left from our events over the course of the year once our feature poets have been paid. The generosity of the folk who attend our nights is key to this scheme’s success.
In 2024, our chosen charity was Base 25, and we’re delighted that we raised a total of £355.27 to support their work with young people in Wolverhampton. Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who came along to our events last year and threw money in the virtual hat – you made this possible. You’re stars, every one of you.
Our charity for this year is going to be Hands 2 Help U, which is a food bank, clothing bank, and one-stop resource doing incredible work in our part of the Black Country. Thank you in advance for helping us to help them.
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.
December. We’re racing toward the fag end of 2024, so we kicked off the final month of the year with a burst of poetic activity. Well, why wouldn’t you?
The day started with two workshops at Wolves Art Gallery, in conjunction with their incredible ‘Painted Dreams’ exhibition. This recreates the original and groundbreaking 1907 exhibition of paintings and pastel drawings by artist Evelyn de Morgan – which was the first ever UK solo exhibition by a female artist – and it’s absolutely magnificent. If you haven’t already been to see it, you’ve got until early March, but don’t hang about, because you’ll want to visit more than once.
Our workshops invited participants to each create a piece of ekphrastic poetry in response to Evelyn de Morgan’s work, and we’re delighted to say that the poems they drafted clearly showed how much of an impact her paintings had on them. Our hope is that the finished poems will be available for visitors to the exhibition to read – hopefully by the time Wolves Lit Fest rolls around at the end of January. More news on that when we have it.
A quick dash home in the last of the daylight, a bite to eat, and it was time for our last Yes We Cant of the year. Reader, what a belter it was! Our open mic poets excelled themselves; ‘Alf Ender Sarah L Dixon entertained with poems in praise of 90s indie music; and our headliner Kim Moore presented us with the gift of new and astounding poems from her forthcoming book. Yes We Cant is always a highlight of our month, but this one was exceptional. We couldn’t have asked to finish the year on a better note.
Now, we’ll be putting our feet up for a well-earned (and much-needed) rest. Our huge thanks and appreciation to everyone who’s supported and enjoyed our work over the course of 2024. We’ll be back again in 2025. If you need a poetry fix in the meantime, the Wolves Lit Fest poetry competition is open to entries until the end of the year (details on our website), and if you’re looking for a unique present for friends and family, then tickets for the 2025 Wolves Lit Fest poetry slam (trumpet-blowing alert: this is undoubtedly one of the best poetry slams around, so ignore it at your peril) are now on sale. You can get yours here.
From here on, we’ll be living the festive dream with lebkuchen, mistletoe, and mulled wine. What could possibly go wrong?
With Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists (PPP) I put on a lot of events, work with a lot of poets and therefore am always on the lookout for people that will be a good fit for the things that we do. We also suggest acts to organisations and festivals we work with (usually the ones we can’t afford to put on ourselves, but would like to see perform where we live ☺). So a good festival, with lots going on in one place, is always attractive. And my goodness, Morecambe is a good festival. It’s the second year that PPP have been in attendance.
I got there on the Thursday evening for the opening event, a low-key event in a brewery tap house. It was a chance to catch up with familiar faces and listen to Sarah L Dixon read from her new collection, based on a music fan’s experience of growing up in an indie music scene. We’re delighted that Sarah will be joining us as ’Alf Ender for our Christmas online Yes, We Cant. We haven’t announced our headliner for that evening as yet…but we’re very excited about who it is…suffice to say it’ll be a belter.
Friday daytime I attended a symposium on spoken word. It’s always useful to find out how people from other parts of the country are dealing with similar things to you. It seems the post-pandemic scene is not as it was in the before times, in part it’s due to lack of money, getting free accessible venues etc. There was agreement that lack of money to book headliners was impoverishing the scene and that though open mics are wonderful and necessary, so are events where people get to see established or emerging artists and are opened up to a wider understanding of what spoken word can be. The increasing costs of rail travel – and the unreliability of said travel – is prohibitive to getting headliners in when nights only have a small budget. How do we address that? Answers on a postcard, please.
Next up was Rowan McCabe, who performed his Door-to-Door Poet show. It was exceptional. I loved it from start to finish. It was upbeat and funny, moving too. Rowan is a fantastic performer and a very likeable character. It’s definitely a show/performer that PPP would like to book somewhere down the line.
In the evening, I watched Mike Harding in The Winter Gardens. This was a good event, very enjoyable, in an incredible venue which is in the process of being restored. The Friday night shenanigans carried on with Henry Normal and then Attila the Stockbroker in the Kings Arms, where the party went on until 2am.
Like most festivals, it’s hard to do everything you want to. There aren’t clashes as such, just wall to wall poetry, so I recommend scheduling breaks, and picking and choosing what you’re going to see – even if you’re a complete poetry party animal.
Saturday started at noon with an open mic. Another chance to see new faces, folk who are just starting out, and I’m always on the lookout for someone who’ll be the perfect fit for something we’re planning. Open mic finished, next up was Robin Ince. He was absolutely great. Which is a relief, as PPP have booked Robin for Wolves Lit Fest Fringe Room in 2025 (February 1st – put the date in your diary!)
One of our roles at Morecambe was to bring Midlands poets to the festival. We were delighted to give a platform to Kenton Samuels, Gracie Bee, and Priyanka Joshi. Three very different poets with very different styles, who were all brilliant. The audience was very receptive, there was a bit of dancing (courtesy of Gracey!), and there were whoops and cheers at the end of the hour. All three poets are featured in Offa’s Press ‘New Voices’ anthology, and the books sold out.
After that excitement I had a bit of a wander around – there are some lovely views and fantastic sculptures along the seafront – and got some food. It’s great to walk out of a venue and have Morecambe Bay to marvel at. Then it was back into the poetry fray once more…
I watched Donna Ashworth, currently the best-selling poet in the UK. Her brand of popular poetry took off on social media over lockdown. She was warm, consummately professional, held the audience in the Winter Gardens, and – judging by the queue of people buying books – Donna will have been very popular with her publishers since she appeared on the scene.
Next it was the turn of Alistair McGowan. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. What I got was a massively entertaining mix of impressions, anecdotes, and bloody good poetry. There was a sort of contemporary Betjeman quality to the work. He’d be on my wish list to book…although I imagine we’d need to whisper into the ears of festival directors to make that one happen. But you know…nothing ventured and all that.
Then I watched Raymond Antrobus over at the King’s Arms before heading back to the B&B. I’d never seen him before but had heard a lot about him. The room was rapt.
Sunday. Another open mic start to the day, which I enjoyed. But I was really there for Helen Ivory and Martin Figura. Martin is one of my favourite poets. I’ve seen him perform three times now, twice in person and once online (for Yes, We Cant). He was even better than I remembered. On fire, he was.
Helen read from her new book ‘Constructing a Witch’ published by Bloodaxe. The poems are beautifully crafted. They’re the kind of poems that you need to hear more than once. I bought one of the pre-launch copies, and I’ve been reading it ever since. It’s very, very good. Layers. Lots to think about. A very unique style.
I watched a few more poets during the afternoon, with a range of varied styles. It’s the great thing about a festival. There’s something for everyone. Kate Fox’s show was really interesting…so much to take in. I really, really want to see it again. Notes were made in the PPP notebook.
I’d also been looking forward to seeing Big Charlie Poet, who’d got a new book out. He was struggling with a cold. Not that you’d have known. He did a lovely, warm reading. PPP like Charlie’s work, so much so we’ve booked him…he’s on at this evening’s Yes, We Cant (checks watch…in approximately 20 minutes at time of writing!). Told you we’re always on the lookout.
By the time Pam Ayres was on at the Winter Gardens I was flagging, but she is utterly brilliant and soon I was feeling energised again. A natural, gracious, entertaining raconteur. I don’t know how she does it, but you feel like a friend is nattering to you over a table rather than that you’re sitting thirty rows back in a theatre. She just draws you in. Funny and fun. And again, watching the queue for books and selfies (which she was wonderfully game for), she’s probably pleasing her publishers as well as her fans.
I sloped off knackered after that. But the poetry party continued, and this year’s festival wound up with the Manky Mates’ tribute to the rare talent that was Jackie Hagan (RIP), who had performed so wonderfully at the festival last year supporting Roger McGough.
I had a few games of pool before going to bed. I hadn’t played since before the pandemic and the sight of a pool table was too much of a draw not to. Poetry and pool, two of my favourite things. And Morecambe did not disappoint.
Tuesday 15th October was another helping of PASTA. We were entertained with rich words on buses, public transport, and lamb[1] based meals. But it wasn’t just entertainment. It was also educational. Did you know there are some trees in Walsall Arboretum that smell of toffee apples? No, nor did I[2]. Did you know one of our poets cannot swear in front of Canadian people? No, nor did I. Did you know there might be a connection between driving a Mercedes on Wolverhampton Ring Road and public displays of self-satisfaction? No, nor did I? But I did have my suspicions about that one.
We had poems, ballads, short stories, and Gilbert and Sullivan cover versions[3]. More importantly we had those people who are “nervous” but managed to push those fears into the ground long enough to walk to the mic and deliver some great works. Back in the day when the three P’s first sat in a pub we wanted a way to bring new people into poetry and get people to perform for the first time. PASTA is an amazing and unique platform for rookies and long may that continue.
Next month’s PASTA is on Tuesday 19th November. The theme is “I” or if you hold it upside down… well, it’s still “I”. But if you hold it sideways it could be “H”. It could even be “1”. So write some stuff about yourself, about Arnold Rimmer[4] or about Malcolm McDowell[5].
See you in November.
[1] I’m sure Emma and Steve would like to point out vegetarian versions of lamb are available.
[2] They smell of toffee apples even if there isn’t a caravan next to them selling toffee apples.
This afternoon, as part of our series of events bringing poetry to Caldmore Community Gardens, we held an open mic event for anyone who wanted to share their poems (especially ones on the theme of nature). It was a cold, grey October day, but we had twenty-five people turn up. Not too shabby!
Our thanks to MC Gracey Bee, to Jane Flint Bridgwater for some wonderfully atmospheric harp music, to Anna, Anna, and Estelle for the coffee, cakes, and samosas, and to everyone who shared their work. It was great to hear so many different voices – and to have people say how much our series of workshops has helped build their confidence in their writing. That’s a huge result in our book!
The next Caldmore workshop? Sunday 20th October, when we’ll be writing poems and doing a seed swap. Bring seeds from your garden, take some new ones back with you. See you there!
Whenever you return to a gig after a bit of a break for the Summer you always wonder if it will have a negative impact. Will everyone have suddenly discovered a new poetry night which is split into two halves with the first half being on a theme and the second half being on any subject and all held together with shambolic professionalism? It’s possible. We imagine there are thousands out there. Somewhere.
If there are, it didn’t have a negative effect. What a night! As always a wide mix of voices took their turns to entertain what we’re sure is one of our biggest PASTA audiences ever. It didn’t matter if it was juxtaposing football with a new term at Uni, talking about a dream world where writing is financially viable or expert use of the word “protozoa” – we had big laughs, rich language and provoked thoughts.
Now I don’t want to bring the vibe down, but you know the Pandemic? It was bonkers, wasn’t it? So it was nice to not only see some new faces trying their hand but also seeing some old faces us PPPers hadn’t seen since the “before times” of a pre-pandemic world. We miss your faces. We hope you’ll be back.
As always, seeing those people who trust the event enough to make it the first time they read their work in front of an audience proves we’re doing something right. And it also shows how nice and supportive you all are as an audience.
Thinking about it, it’s amazing there aren’t thousands of nights like this. People obviously want this stuff. Then again, maybe it’s because in that place, with these people, there’s a bit of magic happening you can’t get elsewhere.
Whatever makes the magic next month will be worth a punt. If you want to pop along it’s 15th October at The Arena Theatre and the theme is “BUSES” or maybe “BUZZES” if you’re Black Country.
It was an incredible Ironbridge Slam 2024 yesterday. A lovely venue and an almost impossible job for the judges. Top notch poetry and performance all afternoon until we finally crowned our winner Brenda Read-Brown. With David Braziel in 2nd place and Ryan Kenny in 3rd. Thanks to everyone who joined us, to the venue for being such wonderful hosts and the techs who made everything go seamlessly.
See you next year.
And if you enjoyed the music played before the event and during the interval…
When the theme was choosen for PASTA in March and it came out as “Scary Panda” I can’t have been the only one who thought, “Oh! That will be tough.” But one thing PASTA always brings out is a level of creativity which is varied, sublime and astonishing.
So yes we had work on scary pandas, and scary Panda-monialists and creatures in general. Then in the second half everyone stretched their wings (or would a more suitable metaphor be “puffed up their fur”) and the mix of subjects, voices and emotions was immense.
It’s great to see how PASTA has grown over time and the variety of faces and experiences which are coming through our little night.
The truth is, when you dare to assemble poets and storytellers you shouldn’t really be surprised at the magic which comes out and it always does. We’ll see you in June.
As a new year races into our vision like an excitable puppy it’s time for PPP to start preparing for Wolverhampton Lit Fest. Since its inception we’ve run events as part of the festival and this year is no exception.
It all starts for us on Saturday 3rd February 2024 when we curate the Fringe Room taking placein the Arena Theatre. All five performances are pay-as-you-feel and it starts off with a trio you might have heard of. Yes, we kick off the event with our Pass the Poetry Parcel show.
Then, rather than rest and go to the pub we instead bring you another four shows from Tina Sederholm, Dan Webber, Rose Condo and duo Willis the Poet and Ben Moore. We also have the Poetry Competition Winners Showcase event at 4.30pm in the same building. If you get there early you technically don’t need to leave the building for six hours so bring your slippers.
After a quick break we then run (well, amble gracefully) over the road to the Art Gallery for the Stars of the Slam event. Jemima Hughes, Matt Jones, Kieren King, Chloe Jacquet and Colin Wells have all earned their place in poetry folklore by winning slams somewhere on this isle and we’re putting them in a single place, at a single time for your enjoyment. All for a fiver. It’s like inflation never happened.
Then the poetry Gods allow us to sleep for a few hours before returning to the Art Gallery on Sunday for the Writers’ Hub. From 11am to 6pm a bevy of local writers’ groups have some time to share their work. All the events are free. Jonathan Davidson from Writing West Midlands will also have a stall at the event for you to find out more about the work WWM do in the region. It’s yet another day you might want to bring your slippers.
And finally on Friday 9th February we have the now legendary Wolverhampton Lit Fest Poetry Slam. Again we’re at the Arena. Tickets are £12 and you can even watch on the livestream if you want to sit in your own home in your slippers. PPP Slams are always special events and the Wolves Lit Fest slam is the specialest of the special. Our hometown slam, in what is usually a packed theatre. Get your tickets sharpish because this can sell out.
With all that buzz, it’s no wonder the puppy is so excited. We hope to see you at one or more (or all!) of the events.
