broadsheet

Way back in late 2016 – when myself, Emma Purshouse, and Dave Pitt founded the Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists collective – one of our major goals was to take poetry out of its small-but-beautifully-formed niche and plonk it down in front of people who are convinced they don’t like poetry.

First, we wrote our ‘poets, prattlers, and pandemonialists’ show, performed it in Wolverhampton, and took it to Edinburgh (then Leamington, then Leeds, and on). That was fun. And a lot of people whose first thought is ‘Ugh. Poetry.’ thought so too, which makes us very happy. (some people who do like poetry enjoyed the show so much they put it forward for a Saboteur Award, and we don’t have words to say how overjoyed we are about that)

Now, we’re busy with another of our ideas which first saw the light of day as our collective met in a Wolverhampton pub and set the world to rights over a couple of pints: the Black Country Broadsheet.

It’s a simple idea. Ten poets from the Black Country. Five free events across the region. One specially commissioned video for each poet. 2000 copies of a broadsheet to hand out to people across the Black Country so they can see that poetry is written by people from their neck of the woods, that it can be funny, serious, angry, loving, and yes, they may not like all of it, but there’s going to be something there which speaks to them. That’s where the free events come in, of course. They’re an opportunity to see all these words come alive. And for people to get up and share their own words, if they want to.

You can find out more about this by following @pandemonialists on Twitter, or by joining this group on Facebook. And keep an eye open for copies of our Black Country Broadsheet when they start appearing towards the end of this month. There are some fantastic poets involved in this, and you’re going to love their work. We do.