05 Jun 2026
St Albans-based poetry group, Ver Poets, is celebrating its 60th anniversary and to mark the occasion, it recently held a reading in St Albans Library and on Zoom to launch a new anthology.
A Staircase in Mid-Air contains poems by members new and old from across the country, many of whom are published poets with collections of their own. There are also contributions from each of the highly respected poets who have judged the Ver Poets Open Competition over the last 10 years.
During the week leading up to the launch, members read poems from the anthology on MIX92.6’s Mix Mornings and Stephen Claughton, the Chair of Ver Poets, gave an interview to Mix Brunch on the morning of the launch itself.
Since it was founded in 1966 by the late May Badman as the St Albans & District Poetry Club, Ver Poets has developed a national membership and reputation.
It held its first meetings in a photographer’s studio and local pubs, but unusually for poets, the members apparently didn’t drink enough to justify their presence there and moved first to a community centre and then to a room in an old house on Bricket Road behind St Albans City Hall. They remained there for a number of years, until the house was condemned because of dry rot and they moved their meetings to the English Room at St Albans School, where John Mole, then the Vice-President and now the President of Ver Poets, taught.
Members were evidently keen in the old days. There’s a cutting from Time Out in 1976 advertising regular Saturday meetings in Bricket Road between 10am and 5pm, involving “Poetry Parlour, Bookstall, coffee, readings, workshop and informal discussion”. Christmas Day was said to be “unlikely”, but New Year’s Day was “as usual”!
These days, Ver Poets are back in the pub, with regular monthly readings and open mics at The Saint & Sinner on St Peter’s Street or in St Albans Library. These are currently free and open to the public.
There are also monthly workshops for members, two of which – one to comment on members’ poems, the other to discuss poems by a well-known poet – are held online. Another for poems in progress takes place at a member’s home in St Albans.
It’s only £15 a year to join (£10 if you are a student) and in addition to the workshops, other benefits include free entry to an annual, members-only competition for poems of up to 10 lines, a newsletter three times a year and a monthly e-letter with information about publishing opportunities, members’ successes and other items of interest to poetry lovers.
Ver Poets welcomes new members, whether they are experienced poets or just starting out.
You can find out how to join this vibrant, encouraging and supportive group by visiting https://verpoets.wixsite.com/verpoets, where you can also buy copies of the anthology.
