here.

Festival partners Nine Arches Press and Writing West Midlands, with support from Arts Council England and the Belgrade Theatre, have announced a programme of seven workshops and over a dozen live poetry events, with over 30 poets and spoken word artists appearing. 

There’ll be three 8pm headline acts across the weekend – Hollie McNish appears on Friday 15 July as part of her Slug tour, where she’ll be joined by Michael Pedersen. Director of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen.

Jill Abram will be joined by special guests Jacob Sam-La Rose, Lewis Driver, Alice Richmond and Meg Waters on Saturday 16 July, and Sunday 17 July will feature John Hegley’s stellar headline act Drawings of Dromedaries (and other creatures).

Throughout the weekend, there’ll also be an array of poets and spoken word artists – many of them hailing from the west Midlands region – sharing, discussing, debating and celebrating poetry. Highlights include Deborah Alma, Raymond Antrobus, Moniza Alvi, Casey Bailey, Natalie Linh Bolderston, Alison Brackenbury, Rishi Dastidar, Rosie Garland, Roz Goddard, Hannah Lowe and John McCullough.