It’s been a busy old start to 2020. January was traditionally – for me, anyway – a month where nothing much happened and I lived as frugally as possible while waiting for the work to come in.
Not now, I don’t.
There’s Wolves Lit Fest, for starters, which takes place at the end of January and has been growing steadily over the last few years. The pandemonialists run a poetry slam, and a Fringe Room, and are heavily involved in several other events (you can find out more about all of them here).
This year, I was also lucky enough to be one of ten poets commissioned to write a poem for Overhear (it’s available via their app as an audio recording when you visit the location it’s set in) and I’ve also been putting the finishing touches to a Heritage Fund supported project about British wrestling in Walsall – I collected the exhibition boards on Friday and three thousand copies of the free newspaper arrived this morning – which will be in Wolverhampton Central Library from Monday 3rd February.
Throw in a trip down to London for work, and another to Leeds to give a talk to students, and there was barely time to squeeze in a poetry gig up in Harrogate last week, but it was worth it. I sold the last copy of a fine fine place, which is now officially out of print. And that surely means it’s time to crack on with book number six. All I need first is some sleep….