Cakes and Poetry: two things every civilized person should love. You can have your poetic cake and eat it too if you find yourself in Belfast on August 25th. The Crescent Arts Centre will play host to Baked Verse, a poetry and baking fundraiser to buy copies of the anti-stress anthology The Emergency Poet and place them at a local mental health facility for use by patients. You’re invited to bring along poems to read and treats to eat. Think if it as The Great British Baking Show with added rhyming couplets. You can read your own work or someone else’s, in whichever style you like, even romantic ballads, the thawed Baked Alaska of poetry.
The Emergency Poet aims to serve as a poetic pick-me-up for the soul. The collection is edited by Deborah Alma, “the world’s first and only emergency poet, who travels to schools, libraries, festivals and other events in her 1970s ambulance to offer consultations and prescribe poems as cures for various maladies.” If you can’t make it to Baked Verse, you can purchase a copy of The Emergency Poet here and it will be delivered on your behalf.
