collaboration

If there’s one thing the past few weeks have shown me, it’s that collaboration is good for the soul. I knew that anyway, of course – I’ve been working with Wolverhampton poets Emma Purshouse and Dave Pitt for the past eighteen months, during which we’ve created a spoken word show (long-listed for a Saboteur Award) set up a thriving poetry night, and done our best to help local pubs stay open and thrive. Recently, though, we expanded this collaborative way of working to include several other poets from our region. The experience has been amazing.

We were lucky enough to get funding from Arts Council England (thanks, folks!) for our Black Country Broadsheet project, which aimed to take poetry out and about in the Black Country, make more people aware of what’s going on here, and entice some of them  along to the events we’d set up. We wanted to take poetry out of its comfort zone. And we did.

What was hugely enjoyable was the opportunity to get to know other poets better, to hang out together, and to have a laugh. To work together with one common purpose. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a project more. Thanks to Rob Francis, Rick Sanders, Casey Bailey, Marianne Burgess, Bones, Jeremy Grant, and Mogs for throwing themselves into this project and helping make it such a success. If you haven’t heard any of their work yet, you’ve been missing out. Luckily, the broadsheet project still has one week left to run, which means you can do something about that.

So pop over to our Youtube channel and give yourself a treat.