I am sorry to report that the BirmingamVerve Poetry festival has been cancelled due to loss of Arts Council Funding.

https://vervepoetry.substack.com/p/moving-at-the-speed-of-community

Dear poets

It is with a heavy heart that I write to let you know that for the first time in 9 years we have failed to secure the Arts Council funding we need to run the festival we scheduled for May 2026. We have therefore had to postpone the festival.

Initially on hearing this I was both upset and angry and I am still sitting with a fair amount of disbelief and gloom. And while a lot of that has now evolved into determination to continue in any way we can, it is unlikely that a festival will now happen before February 2027. We have our heads together towards this end, but nothing concrete yet.

I am aware that this will disappoint many of you – particularly those who have responded to our open calls for scratch performances Work in Poetry (we have emailed you separately), our annual competition Poem of the Festival (you can read more about how we will proceed with our competition below) along with those who had hopes of appearing, and of course attending.

February 2027 will be our 10th birthday. I hope we will be able to return even stronger and can look forward to many more festivals beyond that too. To achieve this we will need to get ourselves on a much better financial footing and will need to make ourselves much less reliant on Arts Council funding in a current climate in which even the very best of the arts are finding it difficult to get the funding they need.

Stuart Bartholomew