I heard that Portsmouth Football Club were planning a series of projects to mark their 125th anniversary. I saw a tweet that the club, and the Portsmouth FC History Society in particular, were looking for people to come forward to help with the celebrations. The 100th anniversary had come at a time when the club was going through one of its regular financial wobbles, so the celebrations had been a little muted. My instinct, as it usually is in these situations, was to talk myself out of getting involved. Others would be better. More experienced. More connected to the club. They wouldn’t be interested in what I had to offer. You’ll recognise those excuses. They’re the same ones that stop most of us from doing most things. In the end, I sent an email anyway.

Three years later, Portsmouth FC has one of only two poetry pages in a professional football programme in the country - across all 92 Premier League to Championship to League One and Two clubs, the National League and its feeders, the Scottish leagues from the Premiership to Division Two, and the Welsh league. The other is Exeter City, where they have an official bard who writes a poem each week. That’s two clubs out of 250.

Pompey’s programme works differently. There are two of us contributing, myself and Chris Perry. We write a short article for each programme reflecting a theme or the opposition, alongside a poem. But unlike Exeter, we also include poems from other writers: from the poet laureate Simon Armitage, to well-known local voices, to people who have never seen their work in print before.

The programme sells around 2,500 copies per match. Average readership is apparently four per copy, which means roughly 10,000 people encountering poetry at each home game. Most of them haven’t read a poem since school, if at all. Many have no particular interest in poetry. They picked up a programme to check the team sheet and found something else entirely.

We’ve also organised open-mic evenings where people have been able to perform their poetry for the first time. It’s been brilliant to give people the opportunity to share their writing to the wider community. It’s also worth bearing in mind that Portsmouth has one of the worst literacy rates in the country, and a certain reputation that has been difficult to dispel, despite a thriving creative scene. The page has had very positive feedback, including from people whose reputation in the 1970s and 1980s would make you think they would be the last sort who would find poetry of interest.

From a personal perspective, once I got past the initial buzz of seeing my words in the programme, it has been an interesting challenge to write poetry and editorial copy to a fixed deadline. The programme page format combines an 800-ish word article with a poem. For the first couple of seasons, when Pompey got promoted from League One to the Championship, most of the articles tended to have a link, however tenuous, to the team we were playing that day. This season they have diverged more, to reference people involved in the workings of the club, or former players, or other more esoteric but still football-related themes. We’ve also managed to squeeze in oblique references to topical news themes. As an example I wrote a poem full of references to the flags of former Pompey players at the time when the England-flags-on-lamp-posts campaign was at its peak, and there have been other articles referencing immigration, football finances and dodgy club owners, FIFA and the FA, along with the usual topics you’d expect.

As the season winds down I’m starting to look forwards to the 2026-27 season. Whilst I’m happy to continue contributing my own poems, I am also looking for further contributors, whether Pompey supporters or not. If you are interested let me know by emailing creativewriting125@gmail.com.
Payment will be in the form of a programme (paid out of my own pocket, so if you are local and want to pick up a copy that would be appreciated.

Richard Williams has had around 150 poems appear in print and online publications, and on local buses, BBC radio and a Portsmouth hospital ward during Covid. A first collection, Landings, was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2018. He's been actively involved in the Portsmouth creative community for the last 20 or so years, organising events such as poetry film screenings in the city's civic centre, writing workshops in Haslar IRC (immigration removal centre), and co-running a poetry page in the Portsmouth FC matchday programme.


Background: Play up, Pompey! Richard and Chris issue writing call-out to Portsmouth football fans

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