Wigan poet Louise Fazackerley, a well-known figure at Write Out Loud and other spoken word events in the north-west, and now a winner of BBC Radio 3’s Verb New Voices award, has written a blog for the Guardian on how it felt to travel down to London for a BBC publicity event – and how it feels to live in Wigan.   

She says: “Artists come from Wigan; they rarely stay here. Towns like mine live in the reflected glamour of Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds. Wigan doesn't have an arts venue. There are few places for artists to converge but there is a thriving poetry scene and a literature festival.”

She goes on to say that “this is my first year as a full-time performance poet –yes, I gave up the day job – and performance poetry is getting BIG. There’s competition out there.”

“Like dandelions in summer, spoken word open mics and poetry slams have sprouted up in pubs, libraries and arts centres all over the north of England. Even poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy is teaching up here.

“Poetry has a bad reputation as a spectator sport. People seem to think it's always on about war or love: elitist, depressing and difficult to understand. I'm calling my commission 'Love Is A Battlefield'. It's about, ahem, war, love and the post-traumatic stress disorder my partner suffered from his experiences as a solider in Afghanistan. A cheery little topic. But it's not elitist. It is, I hope, full of hope and not too difficult to love.”

She writes of meeting Cerys Matthews and Jarvis Cocker in London, and of writing a poem about Cocker on the train home: “I pen a dirty ditty about my love for Jarvis. And I'm happy that I write poetry for common people. Common people, like me.”  

Verb New Voices was created by Arts Council England with the BBC, and is managed by New Writing North. The three writers will receive mentoring from partner organisations including Writing Squad in Yorkshire, Contact Theatre in Manchester, and ARC in Stockton-on-Tees, a place on an Arvon writing course, support to develop a live show, and a special commission to create a piece of work for BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, which will be broadcast this autumn.

You can read the full Guardian blog here

PHOTOGRAPH: HOWARD HAIGH