Launched as part of Watford Live! this summer, Life is Beautiful, the monthly DIY WOMP spoken word event at Cha Cha Cha in Cassiobury Park is already going places. This month’s headliner is Luke Wright, who hosted Latitude’s poetry arena (the largest poetry event in Europe) and is poet-in-residence on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live.

His latest show, titled The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright, debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year.

The driving force for the event is DIY Womp’s Jamie Fewery, editor of Art and Things magazine, who lives in Kings Langley and is currently in his final year at the University of Hertfordshire studying English literature and philosophy.

Jamie also contributes to an online literary magazine with Penguin Books called Five Dials, which comes out in PDF form. He is keen to develop literary events in his hometown of Watford and forge links between young artists.

“I do it in my spare time,” says Jamie. “We’re establishing an online arts community for people to look at each others’ work. As long as young people are creating and speaking to one another, art can remain strong. Literature has to embrace digital technology, not work against it like the music business did for so many years. I think books will always survive, I’m sceptic of e-reads, but you can’t underestimate the power of the blog culture.”

For Life Is Beautiful, Jamie has been collaborating with performance poet Mat Lloyd who will be compering on the night. Mat’s short film from his debut collection of poems, Demo Tape, won Best Film at this year’s Short Cuts Film Awards.

Jamie tells me Mat has been instrumental in bringing the likes of Luke Wright to our door for this free, one-off show in support of the Free Speech tour, (previously Oral Cabaret at The Maltings Art Centre in St Albans), which is one of the premier events on the UK spoken word calendar.

“Mat spoke to me about doing something for the Poetry Link tour which is calling in at Norwich, Peterborough and Chelmsford. Luke is one of the UK’s most prestigious performance poets. The night’s been really successful so far and we’ve moved on quite a lot. I anticipate it will be really busy.”

Also featuring on the night are The Anti Poet – Paul Eccentric and Ollie Wilton, one of the only few poets to be disqualified from a slam, also putting in a special appearance is Vinnie Gibbons, The Bastard Attack Poet.

Life Is Beautiful comes to Cha Cha Cha Café in Cassiobury Park, Watford on Wednesday, November 25 at 7.30pm. Details: www.DIY-Womp.com