Dead Good Poets Society

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The Dead Good Poets Society is based in Liverpool and exists to promote poetry through performance and to encourage the development of new poets and audiences.

DGPS was started around 1989 in the upstairs bar of the Pilgrim pub in Liverpool. Initially called the Pilgrim Poets they started to run events under the name the Evil Dead Poets in 1991. The current name was adopted as a funding-friendly brand when regional arts board money became available to run monthly guest nights. The Dead Good Poets Society has moved through several venues in its lifetime, and currently resides at the Everyman Bistro Third Room.

Everyone's heard of the Liverpool Poets of the sixties. Who has been carrying the poetry torch since then?

Well, for starters: Dinesh Allirajah, Mandy Coe, Gladys Mary Coles, Deryn Rees-Jones, Jean Sprackland, Levi Tafari and Glyn Wright. All have produced significant work over the last 20 years in Liverpool. For example, Sprackland's recent book Hard Water (Cape, 2004) was short-listed for the 2003 Whitbread Awards. She and Rees-Jones were lauded as Next Generation poets (2004) too.

Dead Good Poets Scoiety events draw people from Wirral, St Helen's, Wigan, Bolton, Preston and so on to monthly open mics and also to guest nights which have hosted many big names - Simon Armitage, Paul Farley, Peter Finch, Rosie Lugosi, Les Murray, Chloe Poems, and Levi Tafari - along with promising local poets.

A not-for-profit company, DGPS is funded by Arts Council England and part of its role is to increase the skills of local poets both in their writing, performance, reading and appreciation of poetry. They also produced an anthology in 2006 - Dead Good Poets Society - The Book.

In 2008 Liverpool will be European Capital of Culture. And there are now a wider range of poets than ever before - more people from diverse backgrounds and different levels of education who are taking part and giving their voices to the ever-changing cultures that make up Liverpool.

[edit] External links

Dead Good Poets Society website