The world of open-mic poetry just went up another notch, as a wonderfully diverse group of poets worked and performed together on our recent week-long Write Out Loud/Arvon open-mic poetry course. Wonderful new work was written and edited, performance and presentation skills honed and practised, new ideas launched, contacts and relationships formed, wine drunk. Francesca Beard was a fantastic co-tutor, newly back from a tour of China, generous to a fault in sharing her experience as a successful, professional performance poet. Elvis McGonagall wowed us with his stunning performance and writing skills, and then was totally open to questions and discussion about his career; and the provenance of his shoes and jacket.

The emphasis was on diversity, openness, generosity and quality, with an especial joy being the fact that it was a real coming-together of what can still seem to be the two worlds of “proper” or page poetry, and the groundswell of creativity that is the UK open-mic poetry movement. Democratic versus elitist? Dumbing-down versus quality? Page versus stage? Open-mic barbarians at the poetry establishment’s gates?

Yeah, why not? One participant, having just won £500 as runner-up in a top poetry competition, chose to invest some of it in this course, considering how he might participate, professionally, in this great movement. It sometimes seems to me that the poetry establishment are looking enviously at the party going on downstairs, pouring their cocktails into the pot plants, drifting down and cracking open a beer in our open-mic kitchen.

We had poetry impresarios who run their own, highly-successful, open-mic events at opposite ends of the country, BBC radio personnel with handy microphone skills, linguists, stand-up comics, lie-down actors and poets, poets, poets; we had dark to frivolous, hilarity to horror, pathos to politics, water to wine (you sure? Ed).  Arvon courses are characterised by a Friday evening where the week’s work is showcased. The compere apart, the evening was just stunning, as the poets put together all that they had imbibed (metaphorically, you understand) from the intensive yet satisfying week; and we did the show right there. Sure it was entertaining, but the word that Francesca and I kept on using was “quality”. And, Wow!

Throughout, Ted Hughes, whose house this once was, gazed down from his photos, thinking, what? (hmm, good poem in that). Would he have approved? Well, there was one point he might not have. We were considering editing poems for performance. It was in the dining room, where Ted’s framed handwritten poems line the walls. We stuck our poems on the wall and offered editing suggestions via post-its around each other’s piece of work. And one wag started offering editing suggestions to Ted’s poems. If that is not a metaphor for the open-mic poetry movement, dunno what is.

If you get chance to go to Lumb Bank, do it. The house is magnificent, the views and walks stunning, and the courses have a very high reputation indeed. It was funny for me to compere the Friday night event in the same room where, as a student on the scriptwriting course I had attended around 10 years ago, Jimmy McGovern had performed my monologue to a tearful audience. Last time I write comedy!

I want to thank all those people who helped us to let everyone know of the course’s availability, including the Write Out Loud teams, the Arvon staff who did so much to ensure it all ran smoothly, co-tutors Francesca Beard and Elvis McGonagall, and the performance poetry stars of the future.

The Arvon brochure is published early each new year, and courses fill up quickly.