Since our Your Local Arena in Liverpool in May 2020 in partnership with the WOW Festival, which celebrated legendary football managers Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Liverpool's own Bill Shankly, Liverpool have won this year's Premiership title. In honour of that, we're delighted to publish some of the best life writing pieces to come out of our WOW Your Local Arena workshop run by Tony Wailey, as well as share Levi Tafari's celebratory poem about Liverpool's achievement.

Poetry - Levi Tafari

Levi Tafari was born and raised in Liverpool by his Jamaican parents. He attended catering college where he studied Classical French cuisine and then entered the world of catering. Attending the Liverpool 8 Writers Workshop to quench his artistic urge, in the early 1980s he started a new career as a poet. Levi sees himself as an Urban Griot, the griot being the traditional consciousness raiser, storyteller, newscaster and political agitator. His work is rhythmic and lyrical; in the past he has teamed up with reggae, soul and funk fusion bands. He has been Writer in Residence at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic and has toured various countries, including the Czech Republic, China and Hong Kong. He has also spent two seasons as poet in residence with The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Levi has four collections of his poetry published and his work has been included in many anthologies. He has written a number of plays which have been performed at Liverpool’s Unity, Everyman and Playhouse Theatres as well as at the Blackheath Theatre in Stafford. Aside from this, Tafari also works in education: running creative writing workshops in prisons, schools and universities.

YOUR LOCAL ARENA: RESPONDING TO Celebrating Liverpool's Success