At our 2019 festival, we had many requests from audience members who wanted to take to the stage and perform their favourite poem, or a treasured piece of their own work. So this year, we’re creating a space to make that possible,

Join us for the Festival’s own Open Mic event – share your own poetry, read aloud a poem by a favourite author, or listen to fellow Festival attendees. Our theme for the event is gardens, the natural world and eco-poetry. 

Each poet will have up to 3 minutes at the microphone. There are 12 slots available, and booking will take place on a first-come, first-served basis.

This is a FREE event, but in order to attend (either as a reader or an audience member), you’ll need to hold a ticket to either the Poetry Writing Workshop OR Carol Ann Duffy’s reading (Bursary tickets for those on low incomes are available for Carol Ann Duffy’s reading.)  Once you’ve bought your ticket to one of those events, simply email us to reserve your space at the Performance Poetry event

If you’d like to read a poem, please include details of the poem you intend to read and any background to your choice that you’d like to share, and please also let us know if you’ve performed at an open mic before.

Please note: this is a ‘pre-watershed’ event that we want to make welcoming to a wide range of people. This therefore isn’t the right event for poetry of trauma, for swearing, or for poetry which uses insulting or dehumanising language. This also applies to poetry in which you’re reclaiming offensive language