UK’s biggest poetry festival welcomes Birmingham’s poetry and spoken word festival, Verve, for a special collaboration on Sunday 28th June 2026.
Ledbury Poetry Festival, the UK’s biggest and joint-oldest poetry festival, are excited to be welcoming Birmingham’s VERVE Poetry Festival to Ledbury for the first Sunday of the 2026 festival. After VERVE discovered they were unable to go ahead with their planned festival this year, Ledbury Poetry Director Amy Howard was quick to get in touch with VERVE Director Stuart Bartholomew to invite him to bring their unique style to Ledbury.
Collaboration and strong partnerships have been central to Howard’s vision since joining Ledbury Poetry in 2024.
Amy Howard, Director, Ledbury Poetry:
“One of the advantages to running our festival over 10 days each year is that we’re able to welcome other voices and curating styles to Ledbury, to create a genuinely pluralistic, vibrant programme. As a festival often defined by our rural location, connection is absolutely key to us. When we heard that fellow West-Midlanders, VERVE, couldn’t run their festival this year, it seemed like an obvious move to welcome them to Ledbury.”
Stuart Bartholomew, Co-founder and Programmer/ Director, Verve Poetry Festival:
“Having to cancel our annual Birmingham city centre poetry festival for the first time since 2017 due to funding issues has been painful and difficult. But the support of our friends and supporters has been both heart-warming and energising.
None more so than from Amy and the team at Ledbury who have saved our year by offering us a day to be involved at their brilliant festival! We are grateful beyond words and can’t wait to announce the brilliant tranche of poets that we have lined up to share with both our audience and theirs!”
View the full programme here, or visit Ledbury Poetry’s What’s On page.