Accessibility & Digital Festival | Verve Poetry Festival

Covid Safety
Venue
Ticketing
Online Workshops
Livestreaming
BSL Interpretation

COVID Safety

We’re so happy to be back doing in person events after the COVID-19 Pandemic but of course, we need to practice caution to make everyone as safe as possible. We’ll be following whatever guidelines the Hippodrome have in place at the time.

We also encourage people to test beforehand and wear masks to our indoor events although we will not be checking this. We’ve put in efforts to make this year’s VERVE online, as well as in-person, so that everyone can enjoy it, even if they’re put in a position of needing to isolate, details of which you can see below!

Venue

One of the biggest draws of hosting our festival at the Birmingham Hippodrome is how accessible the venue is. For full details of the venue’s facilities, head to their accessibility page here.

Address:
Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre
Hurst Street, Southside
Birmingham, B5 4TB

More Info

The Patrick Studio reception can be reached step-free from either entrance to the Hippodrome, but we recommend using the entrance on Thorp Street for easiest access to the festival.

Thorp Street

The entrance on Thorp Street will be the main entrance for visitors to VERVE. There are two automatic doors that are street level and lead into a foyer.

The Patrick Studio is on the ground level.

This entrance is fully wheelchair accessible.

Please do not hesitate to ask a member of the Hippodrome staff for help or directions to the Patrick Studio if you need further assistance.

Ticketing

All our in person events will have tickets available online here and on the door. You can buy tickets for our digital festival events here.

Online Workshops

The majority of our workshops have online alternatives arranged for the week leading up to the festival. Head to our Eventbrite to see full details.

Livestreaming

As part of our commitment to accessibility, we are continuing our digital festival with all the below events either being available on zoom or as youtube livestreams.

Feb
16
7:30 pm – 10:00 pmVERVE Poetry Night Special – Spoken Word and Music Night hosted by Sam J Grudgings Find out more
Feb
17
7:00 pm – 8:30 pmFriday Night Headline Event: Jay Gao, Will Harris, Denise Saul Find out more
Feb
17
9:00 pm – 10:00 pmVERVE Poetry Film Night Find out more
Feb
18
12:30 pm – 1:30 pmFourth Verve Poetry Performance Lecture – Nick Makoha Find out more
Feb
18
2:00 pm – 4:00 pmHarana Poetry LIVE hosted by Kostya Tsolakis Find out more
Feb
18
4:30 pm – 5:00 pmThe VERVE Long Poem with Wayne Holloway-Smith Find out more
Feb
18
5:30 pm – 7:00 pmSaturday Night Headline Event: Imtiaz Dhaker, Helen Mort, Hannah Sullivan Find out more
Feb
18
7:30 pm – 9:30 pmKevin P. Gilday’s Saturday Night Stramash Find out more
Feb
19
11:00 am – 12:30 pmThe Verve Poetry Festival Competition Event: Protest hosted by Kim Moore.Find out more
Feb
19
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm100 Queer Poems: Hosted by Andrew McMillan and Mary Jean Chan Find out more
Feb
19
3:00 pm – 4:00 pmImogen Stirling Poetry Show: Love The Sinner Find out more
Feb
19
4:30 pm – 6:30 pmBurning Eye Books Showcase hosted by Bridget Hart and Clive Birnie.Find out more
Feb
19
7:00 pm – 8:30 pmSunday Night Headline Event: Zaffar Kunial, Gregory Leadbetter, Jenny Mitchell Find out more

BSL-Interpretation

To help make our festival as accessible as we can, we’ve arranged for a BSL interpreter to be at all of the events listed below!