About Us
Where do we really even begin? Writers Bloc is an organisation which has been through many different phases, many different ideals, many jumps from up and down, to lost to found, to its highs and lows. Writers Bloc has been somewhat of an exploratory child trying to find its way and its fitting, delving into many different scenes, ideas and ideals to see which suits it best. I am proud of it. I think what we have grown and changed into something of beauty.
Let me quickly introduce myself, my name is Calen Critchfield and I founded Writers Bloc by a complete fluke. I have always loved the arts and wanted to be involved in it. I launched Writers Bloc to promote another event we were having. You see, my idea for the organisation was to have a place where creatives could come and express themselves, have a cup of joe and pick up a guitar or hit the keys of the piano at any time of day and let their talents scream. It was a place where writers would come to feel inspired, influencers would come to gain clients and people, people would come to take it all in and feel the love and passion that we pride ourselves on.
Obviously this idea is a bit obscure for a broke 19 year old. So, we thought of creating this same thing, minus the coffee shop being ours. And thus Writers Bloc was born.
As mentioned, we have changed the organisation quite a bit in all the years we have been running. To being an organisation that focused on having team poets, to intents been only on publishing, to focusing on trying to build a coffee brand, to focus on being a highly profitable company. We have been through it all and have tried numerous things to work on brand identity and our speciality. I am not always the best with implementing plans and sometimes struggle if my heart does not follow or feel it. In these moments we have had our old team members bring it all together and I will forever be grateful for everyone who has worked with us and the magic they created for their time at Writers Bloc. One thing I am sure, everyone who has been to us, everyone who we have had the honour of hearing perform at us and everyone who has worked with us will agree, our specialty is based around the people.
Now, I always thought I was business minded and Writers Bloc was my gold mine, but no. I have later figured that it is not about that. It is about the people. Our specialty is bringing like minded people together to express themselves as themselves truly and freely. We are all about love and expression and I am ever so glad that over the years we have been able to create this kind of space.
We have had many people over the years approach us letting us know how the experience of performing in front of an open hearted crowd has liberated them. We like to think of it as therapy without the questions. Music that flatters words of truth and beauty. It moves and flows freely and the people that need to hear are there to support and listen to one another. That is what we are about.
So, we have decided to become an organisation that focuses purely on people. Not profits, not the usual ideas businesses have for growth but people orientated, purely.
We intend on doing this by hosting our usual poetry nights bringing everyone together to express themselves and publishing poets through our organisation with funds raised from events.
We are inviting all back to join us at our beautiful nights. If you are new, welcome. We look forward to seeing you at one of our poetry nights or book launches. If you wish to become one of our published poets, please feel free to contact us and follow us on Facebook