Geoff Stevens
Geoff Stevens was a good friend of Al Barz and a famed Black Country poet and editor whose works were published in every continent. He was an avid supporter of small press publishers and went as far as hosting the International Small Press Poetry Conference. Together with Al and Brendan Hawthorne, they formed the Unleaded Petrels poetry performance group. He also ran Poetry Wednesbury along with Brendan and set up a regular meeting of poets and fans in the bar of the Barlow Theatre, Langley, near Birmingham. Geoff Stevens, was the renowned editor of Purple Patch poetry magazine for 35 years, with several collections of his own work published, some CD recordings and at least one available on YouTube. He also wrote in Black Country dialect and was also an artist in his own small way. Geoff died on 2nd February, 2012, at the age of sixty-nine, after being diagnosed with brain tumours. His death was marked by a group of his fellow poets including Al, with performance of some of his poetry at The Poetry Library, Southbank in London, where collections of his poetry are kept. The Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize is an international poetry competition created by his publisher, Indigo Dreams, and is in its tenth year (April, 2022). A further two thousand of his poems are in Al’s safe-keeping and occasionally published in the Geoff Stevens Facebook Page.