On Saturday 25th January, Wolverhampton celebrates its 4th literature festival with the annual poetry slam. Held at the Arena Theatre in the city centre, this celebration of all that’s good and entertaining in modern poetry is exuberantly hosted by Dave Pitt, Emma Purshouse, and Steve Pottinger, the three members of arts collective Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists.
Fifteen poets – many of them local, but some coming from as far afield as Swindon and Leicester – compete for the prize of a paid gig at next year’s festival in front of a packed audience. They’ll get up behind the mic to read for a maximum three minutes each, and hope to win over the judges with work which is funny, poignant, political, fanciful, hopeful, or plain daft. Poets who win their round go through to the semi-finals, and the winners and highest runner-up of the semis will fight it out in the final for the honour of being crowned champion, and that guaranteed paid gig.
If you’ve always felt poetry isn’t for you, come along and find out just how entertaining it can be. Applaud the poems you love, cheer the judges’ decisions when they agree with you, or debate them on the way home, convinced it was criminal negligence on their part to have ignored the one you knew was best. This is a great night out, and tickets are selling fast. Get yours here: https://wlv.ticketsolve.com/shows/873615001/
