Before you knew you missed us, Verve are back with the details of a brand new - and slightly earlier - poetry competition ahead of our fourth (fourth!) festival coming February 2020. The Verve Poetry Competition has been one of the most...

UniSlam founder and Verve poet Toby Campion wrote a guest blog about UniSlam, its relationship with Birmingham and what you can look forward to at Verve Poetry Festival.  UniSlam is the UK National University Poetry Slam & Summit, bringing together teams of...

Have you heard the poem about the refugee, the postman, the bookie, the barmaid, brass band, homeless person, war hero grandfather, suffragette grandmother, the footballer, and the capitalist? Well you will if you come along to...

Verve Poetry Festival is doing something it has never done before: a lecture. More specifically: a performance lecture, produced in association with The Poetry School (where I currently work). So what exactly is the inaugural Verve Performance Lecture, and...

Whilst we at Verve love putting on some of the finest poets in the world, in one of the greatest cities on the planet, we are also very partial to humouring people. The more studious of you may recall last year's 'Verve is Fake' debacle: where anonymous...

Burning Eye Books is the biggest publisher of UK spoken word and performance poetry. Clive first came up with the crazy notion of putting it on the page back in 2011 at an Ash Dickinson gig. From there, this backroom press has produced 150 poetry...

In late 2016, David Ferris (organ-playing genius) and I (lost poet) concluded it’d be awesome if Birmingham’s equally thriving Poetry and Jazz scenes got together. We messaged peeps, made a sexy banner, and for reasons that are yours to discover, dear blog...

Hello! What a pleasure to feature as a guest blogger for Verve! I’m going to take this opportunity to tell you all about Overhear. Overhear is about location and creative content. It uses mobile technology to link the two and generate a...

We're really excited to announce, after months of deliberation, that the winners of the 2019 Verve Poetry Festival competition, on the theme of 'community', are finally decided. The three winning poets will appear at the competition event on the Saturday...

Last May I wandered into a charity shop and walked out with 11 recent back issues of POETRY magazine. Of all the wonderful poems and poets I read in those issues, one in particular grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. It was Sumita Chakraborty’s long...

The poets who currently comprise the Second City Poets (along with Mikey Barnes) competed in and won UniSlam 2018, the UK’s international collegiate slam. Following that experience and thinking fondly of how well we worked together, regardless of the outcome of the...