Hey! There IS such a thing as poetry heaven, right?

My bank account has never been so embarrassed to be associated with me. When I saw the display of poetry collections inside the Birmingham Hippodrome at the Verve / BBC Contains Strong Language poetry festival, I think I changed as a person. I bought four fresh collections to read, and no, I don’t regret it.

I was only up in Birmingham for the day, but my goodness was Verve / BBC CSL the most amazing experience! I had never been to a poetry festival before and I wasn’t really sure what to expect…I’d booked onto a couple of workshops and the Verve 5th anniversary showcase, but I was still quite apprehensive when I showed up at the Hippodrome fresh-faced (well…as fresh-faced as one can be when they stay up ’til 3am watching a BTS concert with their cousin) at 9am. The books on display were an instant anxiety-reducer. Those of us who love bookshops know the feeling – there is a sense of calm about new books. You could spend forever just trailing your fingers across them and reading the blurbs. Books aside…I ended up having such a wonderful time I didn’t want to leave! So buckle in friends, a lot of poetry fangirling incoming…here’s a little bit about how my day went…

My first activity of the day was a workshop with Scarlett Ward Bennett, a poet from the West Midland whose debut collection ‘ache’ was published by Verve Poetry Press in 2019, and was nominated for the 2020 Forward Poetry Prize! The workshop was called Space & Space – The Infinity of a Blank Page – Scarlett told us a little bit about her obsession with space and space imagery, as well as discussing the use of space as a device in poetry. She was incredible! I’m still finding myself thinking about space…the space between words on a page and how that can be used to evoke a feeling or tell a story…the space between words and syllables when performing a poem onstage and what that means to your audience. We looked at a couple of poems as examples, and the writing exercises were my favourite! Scarlett had the most creative ideas for how to get us writing and perhaps using our imaginations in a way we hadn’t before (I came away with a poem about moon-spiders). The workshop was illuminating and honestly broke down some of the ideals I had about my writing…we literally cut up our poems with scissors! I came away with a sense that writing can be boundless and get to places in such interesting and beautiful vehicles. It was such a wonderful start to the day – I felt like I had finally arrived at the festival 😆Please go and check out Scarlett’s book here, and follow her on instagram and twitter – she’s truly incredible (and she signed my copy of her book 💕)!

Well, if that wasn’t amazing enough, I walked out of the workshop to find none other than my poetry hero Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey! Casey had mentored me on my poetry mentorship programme with The Word Association earlier on this year, as well as holding a group workshop on skills in performance for the mentees. He was the kindest and most encouraging person to work with and I felt so empowered after our mentoring! Seeing him in person was just indescribable…I definitely was a bit of a blubbering fangirl, but he recognised me (and later introduced me to Amerah Saleh as a ‘rising star’….😭you can imagine the kind of chaos that sent me to)! Casey was there to co-host proceedings at the Verve Poetry Press 5th Anniversary event, which I was also booked on to see. He and Luke Kennard comically emceed a celebration of the immense work of Verve poets in disseminating their powerful words. We had performances from a Verve poet published in each year of the publishing press’ existence! I’ve linked each poet’s website to their name, but I’ve got to say my favourite performance was that of Jemima Hughes, who was simply incredible onstage. I want to be able to perform like her one day 🤩 . We had soulful performances from Sam J. Grudgings, Scarlett Ward Bennett, Golnoosh Noor and Amerah Saleh. It was the warmest event, full of such rich, emotional performance – I was transfixed! Please do check out all of the poets above – they are all saying such important things with their words.

The performers on the Verve stage! From left to right: Luke Kennard, Casey Bailey, Sam J Grudings, Golnoosh Nour, Jemima Hughes, Scarlett Ward Bennett and Amerah Saleh.

Verve had yet another lovely event on that afternoon. They have been working with The Queer Muslim Project on a project called ‘Language is a Queer Thing’, which paired three UK poets with three Indian poets to explore their experiences and how language can be better ‘queered’ to reflect their identities. The poets had jetted in to showcase their work, which is now out as an anthology here! My goodness, these performances truly shattered me. Each poet individually performed their work astoundingly, but then they had a beautifully theatrical collective exchange, which was incredible to watch and definitely required tissues. Please go and check out Amani Saeed, Megha Harish, Ife Grillo, Anil Pradhan, Sana Ahsan and Garfield Dsouza – I was lucky enough to meet them all and words can’t express how powerful and brave I found their words. Even better, you can WATCH their whole showcase (!) online on YouTube! 💗

The performers onstage at the Language is a Queer Thing Showcase! From left to right: Ife Grillo, Amani Saeed, Megha Harish, Anil Pradhan, Garfield Dsouza and Sana Ahsan.

By this point, I thought I may be out of emotional resources for my final workshop of the day, but the moment I entered the room for Shivanee Ramlochan’s Poetry as Ferocity, I knew it was going to be awesome. Shivanee is a Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and book blogger. Her most recent collection ‘Everyone Knows I Am A Haunting’ was published in 2017 with Peepal Tree Press. This workshop blew my mind (no exaggeration). We explored unapologetic truths and the different expressions of fierceness we can find in our writing. Shivanee’s exercises were so creative and thought-provoking…I felt like I was at a uni seminar, hard at work! But all with a smile on my face, because Shivanee’s love for words was apparent, and it certainly resonated with me. She had a wonderful way of collaborative teaching and encouraged us to consider ways to write from places that were very difficult and on topics that ‘good girls don’t write about’. My favourite exercise was picking one of said topics from a bag and ending up writing a very sinister fruity poem on something that was….let’s just say not in my normal comfort zone! I had pages and pages of notes and work from the exercises that I came away with and a mind chock full of ideas. I aspire to be a poet as fierce as Shivanee. Please go and check out her latest book here, and you can also follow her on instagram and twitter!

What a day. I have never felt so inspired – meeting my mentors and watching the stunning performances was incredible, but getting out my pen and my notepad to actively work on my craft with these poets was even better! I felt so uplifted and opened up to all the possibilities I had in front of me with my writing. I can’t wait for another Verve festival to come around…I’ll be right back in the front row waving my arms and sobbing!

I hope you enjoyed my little reflection on the Verve / BBC CSL festival. There are a lot of links to check out in this post, but I hope you can find out more about some of the poets I mentioned – everyone I watched and worked with had a special something, and it was just inspirational to see them shine. Leave a comment down below if there’s a poetry festival you’ve been to that you would recommend! And remember to do all the normal things…like, share etc. etc. (it helps) 😁

Lots of love,

SS xx