Festival Launch

Thursday 4 October, 6 – 8pm

Yumm Café, Zellig (The Custard Factory), Gibb Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA

Free, please book to avoid disappointment

Birmingham Book Festival, Birmingham Poet Laureate 2012/13 & National Poetry Day

Special Guest: Elvis McGonagall – One Man & his doggerel!

Join us as we launch the fourteenth Birmingham Book Festival, celebrate National Poetry Day and announce the new Birmingham Poet Laureate 2012/13.

Writing West Midlands’ Programmes Director, Sara Beadle, will say a few words to introduce the Festival and some of the wonderful events to come over the next ten days. Festival staff and volunteers will also be on hand to tell you more and to answer any questions.

The annual Birmingham Poet Laureate programme is run by Birmingham Libraries. Each year a new Laureate is appointed to encourage local people to get involved in poetry. This year’s contenders have been through a rigorous selection process and we wait with anticipation the announcement of the winning poet. To lighten the tension, the out-going Birmingham Poet Laureate, Jan Watts, will be hand to perform alongside the new Laureate, handing over the honorary title with some choice wit and wisdom.

And to round off our evening’s celebration who better than Elvis McGonagall, stand-up poet, armchair revolutionary and recumbent rocker! Elvis, we are told, is the sole resident of The Graceland Caravan Park somewhere near Dundee, where he scribbles verse whilst drinking malt whisky and listening to Johnny Cash. He is also a former World Slam Champion, compere of the notorious Blue Suede Sporran Club and is one of the poets occasionally in residence on BBC Radio 4’s “Saturday Live”. Oh, and he is very, very funny!

The Emergency Poet – The World’s First & Only Mobile Poetic First Aid Service

‘Between the Fountains and the Green Man’, The Custard Factory, Gibb Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA

1 – 6pm. Free, drop in!

As a service to the City of Birmingham, we present the Emergency Poet – a vintage 1960s ambulance in which ‘Dr’ Deborah Alma can minister to the poetic needs of all and sundry. No appointment necessary, simply drop by if you’d like the ‘Dr’ to offer an up-lifting couplet or a life-enhancing stanza or two. Free at the point of demand and unaffected by NHS reforms, let our highly trained medic use the latest diagnostic techniques to prescribe just the write (ha, ha!) poem. Why feel worse? Take Verse!