People, Poetry & Pot Noodles: Stroll & Scribble Launches at Northfield Beach
There’s something gloriously right about hearing poetry in a tent, on a Sunday, with Sid the Shark bouncing about outside and a silent disco thrumming nearby. At this year’s Northfield Beach festival, poetry came home — back to the people, back to the park, spoken out loud with all the joy and mischief it deserves.
Under a dazzling purple-and-yellow-striped marquee, locals gathered on hay bales for the launch of Stroll & Scribble: Words from Walks with Spoz on the Lickey Hills, a new anthology brimming with verse penned by Brum’s own walkers and writers. This wasn’t your usual polite poetry reading — it was community storytelling, alive and kicking.
Fronting the afternoon’s wordsmithery was none other than Spoz (a.k.a. Giovanni Esposito) — poet, ex-Birmingham Poet Laureate, Blues fan, and all-round Brummie legend. Spoz doesn’t just perform poems; he lives them, whether it’s in schools, festivals, or football grounds. Over the past year, he’s been leading hardy souls up the slopes of the Lickey Hills, then coaxing out verses inspired by the views, seasons, and yes — even a dog with a Pot Noodle.
This project — Writing for Wellbeing in the West Midlands — was backed by Northfield Neighbourhood Network Scheme (NNS) via the Northfield Community Partnership (props to Jess Allan, NNS Manager, who penned the anthology’s intro). Hats off to them; this is exactly the kind of grassroots creativity our city needs more of.
Now, if you’ve never scrambled up Beacon Hill, you’re missing out. The Lickeys have been Brum’s green lungs for generations — a playground, a sanctuary, an escape hatch from the clatter of the thousand trades. From Longbridge track-workers to back-to-back kids spending their bus fare in the arcade, these hills are woven into Birmingham’s story.
That history — that affection — was front and centre in every poem read that afternoon. Spoz kicked off with a cheeky ode to the toposcope, declaring, ‘I can see all your houses from here’. Matt Greening followed, urging us to ‘Take off the blinkers’ and remember what stood where those retail parks now sprawl — ‘Montegos, Minis and Metros’.
Kathy Gaffney’s lyrical burst of spring, Emma Harman’s canine Pot Noodle incident, David Hawkins’ shafts of sunlight slicing through the trees (delivered with Emma’s voice), and Florence Rose Henrick’s delicate tribute to the bluebells — ‘little blue fairies’ — all brought the Lickeys alive in vivid snapshots. Jordan Dorsett’s greens and greys painted the hills in their shifting moods, while Rita Lee captured the full cycle in Seasons At The Lickey Hills. And Bernie Lynch paid homage to every Brummie who’s ever trekked those paths: ‘market traders, bookbinders, brewers, bakers, back-to-backers, dog trackers’.
Special mentions from Spoz went to The Word Association CIC, champions of grassroots poetry, and Gez Winter-Hughes, who crafted the anthology’s visual flair.
But the message of the day wasn’t just about poems on pages. It was about voices. Your voice. Spoz nailed it when he told the crowd:
‘We’ve all got voices, we’ve all got valid voices, we’ve all got words — and we can write them down.’
From silent discos to spoken word, Northfield Beach was buzzing. And somewhere, amid the sandpits and sharks, poetry found its proper place — right in the heart of the community.