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< Back This ambitious and experimental workshop channels choreographer and dance theorist Rudolf Laban’s techniques. Friday - 4pm TURNING MOVEMENT INTO POETRY Hippodrome Theatre, Hurst Street, Birmingham, UK According to Laban, human beings move not only from place to place but also from mood to mood so his ideas can apply to the composition of embodied poetry as much as they can to choreographed movement. Laban also encouraged physical, emotional, sensual and intellectual integration which, in the workshop, will translate as poetic rhythms that can be understood and experienced by the body in motion. To this end, participants will be led through a process of writing poetry inspired by Laban’s mapping system of purposeful movement in order to write impactful poetry. ABOUT THE POET Dzifa Benson, who was born in London to Ghanaian parents and grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo and is now based in London, is an award-winning artist in multiple media . Literature is her primary mode for making things but she also uses art, science, technology, the body and ritual to tell stories. She explores all this through poetry, prose, theatre, libretto, performance, curation, video, installation, immersive technologies, essays, criticism and teaching. She embraces collaboration and participation at the heart of what she does and is really interested in research-led, site-specific work that subverts the use of existing spaces. Before all this, she worked as a parliamentary assistant for a member of parliament for seven years. WORKSHOP £24.50 / £18.50 Friday - 4pm Book Tickets

WORKSHOP VALENTINES HOT & COLD Anthony Vahni Capildeo LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Sunday - 12pm PRICE £24.50 / £18.50 Book Tickets Bring your roses and your thorns to this unashamed workshop. What is love? Still unsure? Love your pet? Love being alone? Unleash the language your heart speaks: queer joy or winter blues, tricksiness or comradeship, sweet and bitter foolishness Sometimes silence or stumbling words can be the most expressive, and just how can we love in dark times? We'll dip in and out of sad, glad, and in-between moods, inspired by ancient and modern material. You might find yourself writing a letter to St Valentine in prison, or changing the mottos on love heart candies. The creative prompts in this workshop will encourage you to rethink your definition of love, where to find it, and how to express it. ABOUT THE POET Anthony Vahni Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Currently Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of York, their site-specific word and visual art includes responses to Cornwall’s former capital, Launceston, as the Causley Trust Poet in Residence (2022) and to the Ubatuba granite of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (2023), as well as to Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean built and natural environments. Their numerous books and pamphlets, from No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003), Person Animal Figure (Landfill, 2005) onwards, are distinguished by deliberate engagement with independent and small presses. Their work has been recognized with the Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors) and the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection. Their publications include Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, 2021) (Poetry Book Society Choice), and A Happiness (Intergraphia, 2022). Their interests include silence, translation theory, medieval reworkings, plurilingualism, collaborative work, and traditional masquerade. Recent commissions include research-based Windrush poems for Poet in the City and for the Royal Society of Literature. Capildeo served as a judge for the Jhalak Prize (2023).

WORKSHOP THE SWERVE Ruth Padel LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Saturday - 3pm PRICE £24.50 / £18.50 Book Tickets Write a poem on a moment of change in your own or someone else’s life. The point of this is to emerge with a poem about change which also embodies change. 1. Start out in sections or fragments and see how it goes. 2. Maybe look at other sequence /fragment poems like Wallace Stevens’ ‘Thirteen ways of looking at a Blackbird’ Warsan Shire’s ‘The House’ Robert Hass’s ‘Lines on Last Spring’ or (a really important poem of his, on his relations with his alcoholic mum as a child but also on love sex and evolution) Dragonflies Mating. These unfold in numbered sections, watch how they tell a story or stories, how the perspective might shift from one section to the next, how voice or speaker, length, shape or tone of each section vary. 3. Once you have a sequence of fragments, lay around with losing some, melding them together into one, reversing them... Maybe they done want to go into one - which is fine. ABOUT THE POET Ruth Padel is a writer of unusual range. She has close personal links to Greece, India, classical music, nature, wildlife conservation and science, but is first and foremost an award-winning poet. Her books include thirteen acclaimed poetry collections, two novels, and a wide sweep of non-fiction. She lives in London, is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, and currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge.

VERVE FESTIVAL of POETRY & SPOKEN WORD Experience more poetry for your money with one of our FESTIVAL PASSES . £60/£45 (cons) FESTIVAL PASS £35/£26 (cons) SATURDAY PASS £20/£15 (cons) SUNDAY PASS £50/£35 (cons) ONLINE PASS FEBRUARY 13th - 16th 2025 FULL LINE-UP & EVENT PROGRAMME BELOW ALL EVENTS POETRY SPOKEN WORD WORKSHOPS YOUNG PEOPLE Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info Heading 2 Big Title Heading 2 Button More Info POETRY THE PAMPHLET HOUR Laurie Bolger, Troy Cabida, Betty Doyle, Ellora Sutton Friday - 7pm Book Tickets More Info Book Stream POETRY SATURDAY NIGHT HEADLINE EVENT Theresa Lola, Victoria Kennefick, Anthony Vahni Capildeo with host Jo Bell Saturday - 6pm Book Tickets More Info Book Stream POETRY FRIDAY NIGHT HEADLINE EVENT Dzifa Benson, Anthony Joseph, Richard Scott with host Helen Bowell Friday - 8:30pm Book Tickets More Info Book Stream POETRY LAUNCHING THE NEW CARTHAGINIANS Nick Makoha Sunday - 1pm Book Tickets More Info Book Stream POETRY MAGMA MATTERS: Past, Present and Future Various Magma Regular and Specific Issue Editors Saturday - 2:30pm Book Tickets More Info Book Stream POETRY SUNDAY HEADLINE EVENT Helen Calcutt, Carrie Etter, Ruth Padel, Padraig O Tuama Sunday 2:30pm Book Tickets More Info Book Stream

Inviting twelve local Primary Schools to bring a team of their best poets to this exciting competition hosted and facilitated by Brummie gem Giovanni ‘Spoz’ Esposito, judged by two local poets well versed in the art of poetry. Come and support the poetry stars of the future through their first ever poetry slam! February 10th 2026 - 7pm to 9:30pm - Birmingham Old Rep BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL SLAM We’ve invited twelve local Primary Schools to bring a team of their best poets to this exciting competition hosted and facilitated by Brummie gem and VERVE Poetry Press poet Giovanni ‘Spoz’ Esposito! But there’s more! Our judges will consist of two local poets well versed (get it!) in the art of poetry, who will both perform on the night. Come and support the poetry stars of the future at their first ever poetry slam! Early Bird Tickets available but limited. Once they're gone, they're gone! Book Tickets THE SCHOOLS Devonshire Juniors Yenton Primary Kings Rise Academy Primary Greenholm Primary Bellfield Juniors St. James' RC Primary Rednal Hill Juniors James Watt Primary The Coppice Primary Cofton Primary Northfield Manor Primary Book Tickets VERVE POETRY SCHOOL SLAM VERVE Poetry School Slam is a live poetry event for year 6 students created to give young people a real experience of writing, performing, and being heard. The Slam sits within VERVE’s wider commitment to developing writers at every stage, and offers young poets a chance to share original work in front of an audience, outside the pressures of assessment or classroom marking. Poems are written by the students themselves and performed live. Some are quiet. Some are funny. Some are angry or unsure. All of them count. Book Tickets HOW SCHOOLS TAKE PART Schools take part through workshops and preparation sessions that focus on writing craft, confidence, and performance skills, without forcing a particular style or voice. Students are supported to explore language in ways that feel relevant to their own lives, whether that’s through storytelling, spoken word, or experimental forms. The Slam element introduces structure and momentum rather than pressure. Poems are judged, but the emphasis is on participation, listening, and growth. Many students perform for the first time; others return with more confidence, stronger work, and a clearer sense of what their voice can do. Book Tickets WHAT IT OFFERS VERVE Poetry School Slam is not about producing “polished performers”. It’s about access, permission, and practice. It offers young people a public platform for creative expression, and treats their writing with the same seriousness and respect as adult work. For some students, it’s a one-off experience. For others, it becomes a first step into ongoing writing, performance, or creative confidence. Either way, it meets young people where they are, and gives them space to speak in their own words. Book Tickets

Founded in a poetry book shop as an idea in 2017, now a leading diverse, affordable poetry spoken word festival in Birmingham dedicated to poets and poetry lovers of all genres. INTRODUCING OUR TEAM WHO ARE THE PEOPLE BEHIND VERVE AND WHAT TO THEY DO? FOUNDER/ DIRECTOR STUART BARTHOLOMEW As well as heading up VERVE, Stuart is also Publisher at and Co-Founder of VERVE Poetry Press – an independent press that focusses on publishing poets from Birmingham and the wider UK and has thirty years experience as a bookseller and manager at Waterstones. His programming and publishing vision is to celebrate the full breadth of quality poetic activity – whatever the style or source – in colourful and exciting ways. ADVISORY BOARD SABEEN CHAUDHURY Sabeen Chaudhry is a poet, lecturer, and producer at Ledbury Poetry. Rimming the Event Horizon (The 87 Press) is her first collection, poems from which have been longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize and highly commended in the Forward Prizes. ADVISORY BOARD SHANTEL EDWARDS Shantel Edwards works for Writing West Midlands, programming the Birmingham Literature Festival which takes place in October each year. She is a proud Brummie and is passionate about platforming voices, and stories, from the region. ADVISORY BOARD SUZANNAH EVANS FURNASS Suzannah Evans Furnass is a poet who has published two pamphlets and two collections, most recently Space Baby with Nine Arches Press (2022), and Green with Bad Betty (2024). She lives in Sheffield and is currently an RLF fellow in Sheffield University's Faculty of Biosciences. She spent nine years as assistant editor at the Poetry Business, and has taught creative writing for Sheffield Hallam, the OU and Warwick Writing Programme. Hayley Frances is a poet, creative practitioner, and therapeutic arts facilitator based in the West Midlands. Her work moves between poetry, creative non-fiction, and community practice, exploring grief, ecology, kinship, and the social conditions shaping contemporary life. She is the author of Administer the Laughing Gas (Verve Poetry Press, 2024), a debut collection rooted in birth trauma, loss and survival. CO-DIRECTOR/ MARKETING HAYLEY FRANCES CO-DIRECTOR /FUNDING RICK SANDERS Rick Sanders, aka Willis the Poet, is an established comedy stand-up poet based in the mighty West Midlands. He is a regular headliner and featured poet on the flourishing spoken word scene across the UK, his sticky sausage-fingers in as many pies as he can. ADVISORY BOARD JANE TREGLOWN Jane Treglown's chosen career with Waterstones has encouraged her love of books and allowed her to be part of a community of book lovers for over 25 years. She has managed bookshops of all sizes and enjoys building and training a team; plus curating a book offer bespoke to each town. She has the operational and financial skills that come with running successful bookshops. OUR PATRONS Joelle Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry. Her collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. This was followed up in November 2025 by Maryville (Bloomsbury) which continues the story started in C+NTO . Her novel of inter-connecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has appeared at VERVE four times including our very first festival in 2017. Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistani-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University from January 2020. She is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus and her most recent collection is Shadow Reader (Bloodaxe, 2024). She received the Cholmondeley Award, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Imtiaz has appeared at VERVE three times including a career review interview event with Poetry Unbound in 2024. Daljit Nagra is a poet, professor of poetry, presenter of a weekly poetry programme on Radio, former Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and Lead Advisor to Poetry By Heart. He has won The Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and Cholmondeley Award. His next collection, Yiewsley , is published with Faber in May 2026. Daljit has appeared at VERVE three times including our popular zoom workshop series and was the first poet to read at our very first festival in 2017. Hannah Silva is a writer and performer working in sound poetry, radio, and experimental non-fiction. She has an MFA in Theatre Practice and a PhD on poetry in performance from Stirling University. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career fellow at Queen Mary University, London. Her most recent work is the performative non-fiction book My Child, the Algorithm (Footnote, 2023). Hannah has appeared at VERVE three times, including the first festival in 2017 and always completely memorably. OUR PARTNERS

< Back Part of the sonnet’s resilience lies in its somewhat metaphysical debt to structures found universally in nature and human experience. Saturday - 10:00am THE SONNET: INSIDE & OUTSIDE FORM Hippodrome Theatre, Hurst Street, Birmingham, UK Taking this as a starting point, this workshop explores the ways in which poets can find a personal affinity with the sonnet. Through reading and group exercises poets will uncover ways in which the rigidity of the sonnet can also be intimate, resonating with their individual voices. Everyone welcome to this inspiring workshop from a TS Eliot Prize-winning poet. ABOUT THE POET Dr Anthony Joseph F.R.S.L. is an award winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of five poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Fiction. His most recent fiction publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic . In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kings College, London. His 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry. WORKSHOP £24.50 / £18.50 Saturday - 10:00am Book Tickets

< Back What is poetry if not the revolutionary moment of language? Friday - 1:30pm YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A POEM – a playful revolution Hippodrome Theatre, Hurst Street, Birmingham, UK It is liberated language, language recovering its richness” – Situationist International “Poetry means taking control of the language of your life.” – June Jordan Often, we have no control over the language of our lives. The forms we have to fill, the emails we have to send, the music being played in the supermarket, the names of the roads we follow, the adverts we walk or scroll or flick past. In this workshop , we’ll take back control of the language we live by, exploring the Situationist technique of détournement to liberate language and release the unruly poetic potential in everything from reality TV to coding, online advertising to poetry submission guidelines. We’ll look at pieces by poets including Astra Papachristodoulou, Hala Alyan, and Chris McCabe as we set out on the playful work of taking back control. A NOTE ABOUT THE POET FROM THE POET I’m Ellora Sutton, my pronouns are she/her, and I am a poet living in the wilds of North East Hampshire. I have been the Poet-in-Residence at both Jane Austen’s House and Petersfield Museum, and I am currently the poetry reviewer for Mslexia . I am researching a PhD in English at Northeastern University London, using poetry to assess the impact of gender bias in urban planning on the lived experiences of those who inhabit the city. I have been published online and in print by The Poetry Review , Popshot , Poetry News , fourteen poems , The North, Oxford Poetry, Under the Radar , bath magg, and The Interpreter’s House , amongst others. I have won the Mslexia Poetry Competition, the Artlyst Art to Poetry Award, the Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Competition, and several Young Poets Network challenges. I have been highly commended in the Keats-Shelley Prize, commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize, longlisted for the National Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. WORKSHOP £16 / £12 Friday - 1:30pm Book Tickets

< Back Exploring the many voices of poetry: the art of YOU. Sunday - 10am YOU. YOU. YOU. The Lyric Address in Poetry Hippodrome Theatre, Hurst Street, Birmingham, UK A poem is a word event going in many directions at once. Sometimes the you of a poem is a specific person, other times it's the poet, other times it's a general audience, and still other times, there's no you at all, so the poem addresses itself to the world, or an unnamed and unsummoned character. In this talk, Padraig O Tuama will explore the direction, implication and inspiration contained in the lyric address in contemporary poetry. ABOUT THE POET Pádraig Ó Tuama’s poetry and prose centre around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. His work has won acclaim in circles of poetry, politics, psychotherapy and conflict analysis. His formal qualifications (PhD, MTh and BA) cover creative writing, literary criticism and theology. Alongside this, he pursued vocational training in conflict analysis, specialising in groupwork. His published work is in the fields of poetry, anthology, essay, memoir, theology and conflict. A new volume of poetry — Kitchen Hymns — is forthcoming from CHEERIO in mid 2024. Profiled in The New Yorker , Pádraig’s poems have been featured in Poetry Ireland Review, Academy of American Poets , Harvard Review, New England Review, Raidió Teilifís Éireann’s Poem of the Week , and the Kenyon Review. Pádraig has told stories at The Moth , has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, has presented programmes on poetry and language for BBC Radio 4; and has extended interviews with On Being , with Kim Hill on Radio NZ , and Soul Search on Radio National (Australia). In addition, he has interviewed poets and public figures including former President of Ireland Mary McAleese, Hanif Abdurraqib, The Edge, Sarah Perry, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins and Martin Hayes. WORKSHOP £24.50 / £18.50 Sunday - 10am Book Tickets

SPOKEN WORD POETRY PERFORMANCE LECTURE Susannah Dickey LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Saturday - 1pm PRICE £8 / £6 Book Tickets Book Stream Why Not You? In this year’s Poetry Performance Lecture, we join Susannah Dickey in an innovative exploration of the challenges to romantic intimacy posed by the climate crisis. In this new performance piece, set on the island of Hydra, where cars are banned, stray cats outnumber the population, and forest fires encroach, we will be forced to approach language differently – subjugating the ‘I’-centric quality of historic lyric to include the non-human, as both subject and collaborative force. In creating this ecopoetics of intimacy, the shame of romantic egotism becomes a generative space for thinking collectively about the earth and our place within it. This is a performance in which the speaker wants desperately to communicate love in a different way, using the art form best suited to interrogating language, interrogating selfhood: poetry. The Verve Performance-Lecture (a stylised form of teaching-as-performance, originating from contemporary art practice), invites a poet to create a new piece of work fusing academic discourse with poetry and spoken word on a subject of their choosing. Brought to you in association with the Poetry School.

SPOKEN WORD VERVE X LOUD POETRY SLAM Birmingham Heat LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Thursday - 7pm PRICE £10 / £8 Book Tickets Book Stream Poets from West Midlands and beyond compete in one of 10 heats taking place across Scotland and England for the biggest prize in UK slam poetry. The prestigious Loud Poets Slam Series has expanded, and VERVE is hosting its first-ever Birmingham heat! Watch Birmingham's top poets compete in one of 10 heats taking place across Scotland and England for the biggest prize in UK slam poetry. The winner will take home £200 and qualify for the 2025 Grand Slam Final in Edinburgh, with a £3,000 cash prize! Don't miss this electrifying competition! SIGN UP TO COMPETE IN THE LOUD POETS SLAM I Am Loud started in 2014 as Loud Poets, a live spoken word poetry showcase. Since then they have grown into a multidisciplinary production and entertainment company while keeping live events at the heart of their work. From monthly shows to open mics, tours, and festival performances, I Am Loud showcases the best of spoken word work coming out of Scotland and the UK today.

WORKSHOP WHICHING AND PITCHING The Emma Press LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Sunday 4pm PRICE £24.50 / £18.50 Book Tickets Putting together your pamphlet for submission. Thinking about collecting your poems into a first pamphlet? Bring your idea and join this demystifying workshop run by Birmingham publisher The Emma Press. In considering what editors are looking for in a pamphlet, we will see what we can learn from some of the best recent publications and get thinking about how to select and order your own poems. The session will explore the range of poetry publishers and consider how to pitch, how to talk about your work, and how to know your audiences. With plenty of time for questions and discussion on good practice and common pitfalls, you’ll leave with key footholds for you next steps on your publication journey. This workshop will be run by Emma Press editor James Trevelyan .