As part of our 20-year anniversary celebrations, Write Out Loud will be looking back at significant moments for us and the wider poetry world over the last two decades. They don’t come much more significant than Covid and lockdown. When lockdown was announced five years ago we had to move quickly and clear all the live gig listings from our home page. Our technical wizard Paul Emberson did all that – and rejigged the home page – in about 90 minutes after the-then prime minister Boris Johnson gave the news to the nation.

At the same time one of the live nights associated with Write Out Loud – Write Out Loud Sale – was due to meet. Organiser Sarah Pritchard acted with amazing foresight in quickly restaging the night on Zoom – one of the first, if not the first live poetry organisers to do so. Afterwards she told Write Out Loud: “We had a great time! I highly recommend it. We will do it again until the curfew is over - and there is hunger for workshops, so we're planning that.”

Sarah said the whole experience had “generally been user-friendly … It helps if people are in well-lit spaces to see their faces and have no background noises on and don't make too many other noises ... But hey, you get a tour of other homes and get to meet poets' cats and dogs!”

She added that she thought it was a great way to keep events going and “moreover, cross-fertilise groups and reach out to people who were already homebound and disabled, which is what happened last night”.

Sarah explained that she had recently been involved in a Zoom conference for a World Psychotherapy conference in Birmingham, “plus international teacher friends teaching online in China and Saudi, plus Playback International theatre companies doing virtual performances in India and Indonesia ... So, inspired by them, I thought doing our poetry night would be the obvious way to go.” Sarah added: “Let's do it more. We'll get better and better at it and it's the perfect antidote to confinement and social distancing.” Prophetic words, indeed!

Immediately after the event Sarah said on Facebook that poets from Llandudno, Southport, Salford, Denton, Haywood, Sale, and Altrincham had taken part. “Loved hearing your poems, loved meeting new poets, and about your poetry journeys and projects! Keep creating, we can create our way through this virus.”

A few days later we reported on another online poetry event staged by stand-up performance poet Robert Garnham, which included some early online poetry teething problems. Here’s what reviewer Greg Freeman said:  

“First, there was a question about swear words. Robert Garnham, Devon-based performance poet and MC of the Facebook group Big Poetry Goes Viral, directed the poet to the guidelines: ‘Just a few ground rules, as this counts as a broadcast: no swearing, no hate speech, no pornography.’ He conceded that a few ‘mild’ swear words would be ok.

“Then we were off! Robert, appearing in front of some pale curtains, warmed us up by donning a mask, with additional dancing and a bit of juggling. He kicked things off with a few of his own poems, saying to his audience at the end of his set, “Thank you very much … I can hear your applause from here!”, before handing the Facebook mic to the first poet on his list, Clive Oseman.

“Clive was so close to the camera that you could only see half of his face, but otherwise he managed the technology successfully. Next up was Jamie Harry Scrutton, who was nicely framed in front of a mirror and what appeared to be a cupboard, with a poem about an infestation of fleas.

“There followed a couple of glitches. The next two poets on the list, Simon Williams and Paul Temme, were both unable for one reason or another to appear live. So the virtual baton was handed to Julian Isaacs, ‘trying to look at two devices at once, so bear with me.’ Julian was appearing in what appeared an elegant room, with pictures on the walls. ‘Nice coving,’ someone commented. 

“Jonathan Robert Muirhead gave us a sideways view of his head throughout, despite someone urging him to ‘turn the screen round’. Jonathan carried on, oblivious of this advice – to be fair, he could hardly break off to look at the comments - against a backdrop of check, possibly tartan curtains.

“Pete Edwards got off to a flying start, right way up and everything. And the baton handover to Judy Edwards, in the same room as Pete, was impeccable. Judy began with a nature-walk poem, that we should probably describe as a ‘daily permitted exercise’ poem nowadays.

“Elizabeth McGeown signed off ‘from Belfast’, after giving us an epic paean to childhood dreams and fantasies, and writing and reading. The poem included the line ‘We’re all geeks’ – well, some more than others, I suspect, at least as far as online expertise is concerned.

“Commotion and Emotion (aka Kerry Vincent) told us she was in isolation with seven of her nine children – and gave us a moving poem, ‘As He Ran’, about how some of those children, after being troublesome at school, had turned into smart, bright young men: ‘I struggled with the child, but I’m proud of the man.’

“The last poet billed, Halima Mayat, failed to appear, which provided only a slight anti-climax at the end of a very interesting evening. Hats off to all the Big Poetry Goes Viral performers. It’s one thing plucking up the courage to go up to the mic at a live night – it’s quite another trying to wrestle with technology and expose yourself in your own home. I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that myself. But this option allows those who are housebound under normal circumstances to take part, as well as those who don’t under usual circumstances have a live open mic night that they can get to in their immediate area.

“And they may have passed me by - but I didn't hear any swear words, not even as poets grappled with the technology.”

Doesn’t it bring it all back? And the fact is, we learned to master delivering poetry online, to the extent that Zoom and other platforms have become a recognised and accepted way of delivering poetry, and bringing far-flung poets together. Write Out Loud Northumberland on Zoom – with guest poet Marilyn Longstaff, from Darlington – took place on Wednesday night, and represented a rich mix of poets from the north-east and the south!