Last Saturday it was my enormous pleasure to introduce the wonderful poet and performer Michael Rosen to a packed room of children and adults at the Lightbox in Barnsley town centre.

I said in my introduction that the first thing Michael said when he recovered from the Covid that almost killed him in 2020 was ‘I need to go to Barnsley and perform at their book festival!’

I was joking, of course, partly because of course we hadn’t got a book festival in Barnsley at that time but then, even as I said the words and Michael took to the stage and filled the room with joy and laughter, I thought that maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all because here was one of the best-known poets in the country, the former children’s laureate and best-selling author, performing in our town at our book festival, and that has to be a marvellous thing. And of course he wanted to come and see us.

This is our second Barnsley Book Festival and, because I travel round the country a lot going to bookish events, I can honestly say that the book festival really is helping to put our borough on the map in a glorious way.

And for me there are two things that make Barnsley Book Festival special (well, three if you count the fact that it’s in Barnsley, but that’s obvious).

The first is that it nearly all happens in libraries, often in libraries that have been refurbished or newly built. We have to remind ourselves that refurbished and new libraries aren’t the norm and that all over the country councils are closing libraries or restricting their opening hours and that isn’t the case round here.

I went to the newly done-up Darfield Library the other day and it looked wonderful as it approaches its 60th anniversary. Somehow the redesign has made it like Dr Who’s Tardis in that it looks bigger on the inside than the outside; I stood at one end of the main room and the doors and the entrance doors seemed to be halfway across the bowling green at the other side of the road.

Libraries are true cultural and community hubs at a time when, more than ever, we need spaces where we can get together.

The second thing that makes Barnsley Book Festival special is that it’s not just about the big literary names like Michael Rosen; lots of book festivals up and down the country rely on famous authors to bring the crowds in; at the Barnsley festival the emphasis is very much on the local alongside the well-known and the idea that you can find the universal in the local.

The first week of the festival was in the February half-term and there were loads of chances for young people to get involved in making their own work as well as listening to tales and poems in the brilliant story shell that often washes up on Barnsley’s beaches.

Still to come over the festival there are loads of chances to listen and read, including on Monday at the Lightbox with local writers reading their work alongside professional poets including the brilliant Joelle Taylor who won the biggest prize in poetry in the UK, the TS Eliot Prize, a couple of years ago.

On March 4 I’m introducing and chatting to a trio of local writers who have published book at a sold-out event and we’ll talk about how they got started in writing and what advice they might have for aspiring writers.

And all this is happening here, in our place, and how much I would have loved this when I was a teenager starting to write poems: I’d have never been away! I’d certainly have been at the young writers’ open-mic night on March 7!

The whole festival vibe is the opposite of the advice I got from a well-meaning teacher when I was a sixth-former many years ago.

He’d read some of my poems and we’d talked about how I might one day make a career as a writer and he said ‘of course, once you get yourself started, you’ll have to move to London - there’s no point staying round here if you want to be an author’.

Well, the Barnsley Book Festival is here to tell you that this isn’t the case and we can be a centre of artistic endeavour just as much as anywhere else.

See you at the festival. See you at the library!