Picture: Vaughn Reeves

Dave Reeves was a well-known poet/ performer around the West Midlands for many years. Formerly the editor of Raw Edge magazine and presenter of Radio Wildfire’s live literature show his poetry has been widely published and appreciated. Not bad going for a Netherton lad.

Other examples of his writing can be seen in the glazing of West Bromwich bus station and in the Ballads for Bomere Heath. He also he edited the Brummies All Write series of books throughout the 1990s and, as a freelance public historian, produced the digital exhibition and oral history of St Matthew’s and St Margaret’s Hospitals in Walsall Grounds for Improvement.

He collaborated with Emma Purshouse and Simon Fletcher on The Poetry of the Black Country shortly before his death, which is available, along with his pamphlet/ CD Black Country Dialectics, from the Offa’s Press shop.

He will be greatly missed by all who met him or worked with him over the years.