Featured: Rochdale’s First Poet Laureate Turns Borough into Canvas of Poetry

From prisons and primary schools to libraries and moorland, Sammy’s work has put poetry at the heart of Rochdale’s cultural year.

When Rochdale’s first ever Poet Laureate Sammy Weaver talks about the borough, she does so with the attentiveness of someone who is always listening.

She lives on a narrowboat moored along the Rochdale Canal, surrounded by water, wildlife and the slow movement of the borough’s industrial past. It’s a fitting home for Rochdale’s first ever Poet Laureate (2025–26), someone whose work drifts between greenspaces, its people, and their quiet stories, often left untold.

“I’ve always been drawn to post-industrial places,” she said.

“But this role has helped me really get to know Rochdale. The people, the pride, the tenderness that exists here.”

Sammy’s appointment, supported by Rochdale Creates, is part of Rochdale’s year as Greater Manchester Town of Culture, a borough-wide programme celebrating local creativity, heritage, and community.

Commissioned to capture the spirit of Rochdale in poetry, her role goes far beyond writing.

Between May 2025 and March 2026, she has led 20 school workshops and 10 adult workshops, mentored two young Poets in Residence, and taken poetry into spaces where it’s rarely invited.

Including Buckley Hall Prison.

Poetry where you least expect it

“One of the most powerful workshops was at HMP Buckley Hall,” Sammy says.

“Poetry and prisons are best mates. People often write their best work in challenging times.”

The men she worked with didn’t just write poems, they set up their own poetry group afterwards.

“That’s when you know something’s landed,” she says. “When it doesn’t stop when you leave the room.”

Across the borough, workshops have taken place everywhere from libraries and community cafés to U3A groups, Living Well sessions, Chatty Café in Heywood, refugee and asylum-seeker groups, and schools from Pennine villages to the Darnhill estate.

“I love the challenge of making poetry accessible,” Sammy explains.

“A lot of people come in thinking poetry isn’t for them. My job is to take that fear away.”

Magic spells and small revolutions

Sammy has especially enjoyed guiding young people towards their creative selves, and witnessed some transformations from quite unwilling to passionate about the written word.

“The kids’ poems were incredible,” she says. “We wrote magic spells to change the world. Some wrote spells to stop bullying. Others wanted to fix climate change or control time.”

It wasn’t just the confident writers who surprised her.

“We had children who’d been told they weren’t good at writing – kids who’d rather be outside playing football,” she says. “But suddenly they were writing poetry because it felt playful, not scary. Those moments stay with you.”

For many, it was also their first visit to a library.

“They had tours, learned how to become members. Some came back the very next day to take books out,” she says. “Seeing libraries become spaces they feel belong to them – that really mattered.”

Many places, many voices

What emerged across the workshops was a powerful sense of place.

“Belonging and home came up again and again,” Sammy says.

“People naturally wrote about where they live – and every part of Rochdale is so different.” From the moors above the town to dense estates, post-industrial landscapes and green spaces tucked between housing, the borough revealed itself in poems written in Lancashire dialect, by people with English as a second language, and by residents newly arrived in the UK.

She added: “We’re an edgeland. Heavy industry, high population, then suddenly looming moorland. People care deeply about green spaces here. That pride and community spirit is visible in the people I’ve met and the poetry they’ve written”

It’s something she feels is often overlooked.

“Rochdale gets a bad reputation,” she says. “But it doesn’t reflect what’s happening at the grassroots level - people really supporting each other. It doesn’t deserve the bad press.”

Writing the borough, poem by poem

Alongside the workshops, Sammy has been creating new work for the laureateship – including five poems for each township and a piece celebrating the Town of Culture year.

“It’s been a balancing act,” she says.

“My own poetry is usually quite dark, but this has been about honouring the tender beauty of local people.”

Each poem is rooted in research and listening. “I could have written a whole series about old mills,” she says.

“But I didn’t want to dwell in the past. It’s about past, present and future all at once.” Her influences range from Seamus Heaney to contemporary poets Fiona Benson and Terrance Hayes – writers she describes as her “anchor poets”, capturing both violence and beauty.

A lasting legacy in print – and beyond

All the writing created during the year will be gathered into a new anthology, launching on Saturday 21 March 2026 at Rochdale Central Library (Number One Riverside) as part of a public celebration and performance event.

“We’ve got hundreds of poems to sift through,” Sammy says. “The response has been amazing.”

But for her, the legacy isn’t just a book.

“If someone carries on going to a poetry group, or a young person realises they love words and sound, that’s enough,” she says. “Poetry doesn’t have to be serious or perfect. If you enjoy making sounds with your mouth, you might be a poet one day.”

Sammy says what has been most inspiring is helping the hidden voices and places of Rochdale be celebrated, from overlooked green spaces to the borough’s radical history, echoing the spirit of local reformers like Sam Bamford and the pioneering Rochdale Cooperative movement.

She hopes her year will lift poetry’s profile across the borough – in libraries, online, at spoken-word nights, and in everyday life.

“Even if people only encounter it on Instagram, or at an exhibition, I hope it sparks something,” she says. And as for the place that inspires her most? “It’s always the people,” she says.

“Whether that’s in a prison yard, a school hall, a green space I didn’t know existed – those moments of connection are everything.”

What’s coming up

Sammy is hosting a series of spoken-word events across the borough, including:

• Pennine & Nature Poetry – Wardle Library, Saturday 24 January 2026
• Northern Voices & Identity – Spotland Library, Saturday 7 February 2026
• Say It Loud! Poetry of Rebels – Middleton Library, Thursday 5 March 2026
• Rochdale Town of Culture in Poems – Rochdale Central Library, Saturday 21 March 2026 (anthology launch)