Poetry and Spoken Word Group Open Mic Night

Join us for an evening of live poetry as we celebrate our first ever Poetry and Spoken Word Open Mic event.

Our performer tickets are now sold out, but attendee tickets are still avaialble. Come along and enjoy a fun and relaxed night of poetry and performance.

Not a member? Sign up here.

Programme

• 6.30pm – Guest arrivals, refreshments on arrival
• 6.40pm – Welcome and performance from Keith Jarrett
• 6.50pm – 8 performances (30 mins)
• 7.20pm – Refreshment break
• 7.40pm – 8 performances (30 mins)
• 8.10pm – Closing comments from Keith Jarrett
• 8.15pm – Networking & refreshments
• 8.30pm – Ends

The Line up

Keith Jarrett – Host 

Keith Jarrett’s poetry, fiction and essays have been widely anthologised. A multiple slam champion, he was selected for the International Literary Showcase as an outstanding LGBT writer. Keith teaches at NYU London and holds a PhD from Birkbeck. His poetry collection Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied is a PBS Spring Recommendation.  

Evan John – Performer

Evan L John writes poems and short stories in his spare time. His poetry focuses on faith and nature, and particularly the persistence of faith in the face of doubt.

A.K Davidson – Performer

A.K. Davidson’s poetry has been published in Good Housekeeping, Pennine Platform and other magazines. Her debut collection Poetry for Life and Other Chronic Conditions is available from all good bookshops. Find her work in progress on Instagram, @mondayispoetry.

Website: therightword.co.uk

Jeff Probst – Performer

Jeff Probst, a Californian, saw many of his poems, including ‘Fear of Folkdancing’, published in America in the Eighties. He moved to the UK in 1990; his Nineties memoir is ‘Teaching Shakespeare to Hairdressers: An American Teacher in London’. His novels include ‘When the Moon was White‘ and ‘Bachelor Butterflies’.

Dr Miranda Anderson – Performer

Dr Miranda Anderson is a philosopher of mind and of the arts and humanities, a literary scholar, a historian, an art curator, and now a poet. Her first published poetry will appear in a special issue of The Philosopher (Spring 2027) on The Weaponized Earth.  Her book, The Renaissance Extended Mind,  explores current and Renaissance ideas of the mind as not just brain-bound but as extended across brain, body and world and through imaginative flights. She edited four volumes on ideas about the mind between antiquity and the twentieth century and curated The Extended Mind a contemporary art exhibition with Talbot Rice Gallery (2019-20). She has performed a one-woman show for the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas during Edinburgh Festival (2018, 2022). She is working on her first poetry collection which is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s claim that to write a single poem it is necessary to have many, many experiences till they are forgotten and then to patiently await their return when they have become translated ‘into our very blood, into glance and gesture’. She is available to review films, art and culture.

Email: miranda.anderson@ed.ac.uk

Florence Chukwuonye– Performer

Florence Njideka Chukwuonye is a Nigerian author, poet, performer, and English teacher based in the UK. Her debut anthology, Tranquillity in Turbulence, showcases poems of conviction and quiet strength – poems that insist that in turbulence, tranquillity can be chosen. She writers to inspire reflection, nurture imagination, and affirm human values.

Instagram: @florencechukwuonye22  | Website: www.florencechukwuonye.com | LinkedIn: florence-chukwuonye

Liz Kendall – Performer

Liz Kendall’s poetry is rooted in nature, wildness, and connection. She co-authored the award-winning book Meet Us and Eat Us: Food plants from around the world and runs Creative Relaxation poetry workshops in Surrey. Publications include The Black Cat Poetry Press, Candlestick Press, and Mslexia. Her website is theedgeofthewoods.uk.

Rósalín Callaghan – Performer

Rósalín Callaghan lives in Derry with rescue cats Beannacht and Réaltaín, and hereditary amyloidosis, a rare genetic condition. Founder of Amyloidosis Ireland, her poetry has appeared widely, with award-shortlisted and slam successes. A former barrister, she spends her time writing, neglecting housework, killing houseplants, and pursuing reluctant feline affection.

Hilary Davies – Performer

Hilary Davies’ fifth collection, Compass Light, appeared from Renard Press in autumn 2025. She is a former Chairman of the Poetry Society, and has been an RLF Fellow at King’s College, London and the British Library. She is a  Hawthornden Fellow and Fellow of the Temenos Academy.

Jenny Mitchell – Performer

Jenny Mitchell has three collections: Her Lost Language was joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize; Map of A Plantation won the Poetry Book Awards and is a university set text. Resurrection of a Black Man contains three prize-winning poems. She is a poetry co-editor for the Morning Star.

Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani – Performer

Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani is a London-based poet and interdisciplinary artist of mixed cultural heritage (Croatian/Algerian/French). Her poetry in English, French and Croatian has been published in the UK, Canada and Croatia. Jasmina’s collaborative poetry project “Unbound” received funding from the AHRC-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking Small grants programme in 2018 & 2019. She has (co-)directed several multilingual poetry recitals and live performances in the UK, France, and Croatia, and she has given talks, written essays, and facilitated panels on multilingual poetry practice. She is currently studying Arabic calligraphy and the Arabic script as part of her latest familial history project. Website:

Website: https://jasminabradovani.com

Richard Adams – Performer

Richard F Adams writes poems built from scenes rather than arguments — chip shops, train platforms, hospital corridors, Barnsley backyards and Weybridge suburbs. His debut, Not Yet, runs from a Yorkshire childhood to the day he watched himself die. It includes a critical edition of Kubla Khan set in Tesco Express.

He is a working artist, building an AI anti therapist, a former senior academic/principal/senior fellow/visiting prof/founder/charity chair as well as interactive TV pioneer, game programmer, business partner and more. He is writing a book on emergent post-human aesthetics and radical creativity through next gen AI. By day he’s Head of technical architecture in rail.

Lucy Coats – Performer

Lucy Coats’s poetry encompasses nature, war, grief, mythology, queerness, and the effects of patriarchy on women. In 2024 she was shortlisted for The Bridport Poetry Prize, and in 2022 won the Latin Programme Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection is out on submission, and she is currently writing about matriarchal goddesses.

Janice Whyne – Performer

Janice Whyne – Jamaican heritage, London-based poet and community development practitioner. Explores identity and social justice; two-time runner-up at Ubud Writers & Readers Festival Poetry Slam. Publications include The Caribbean Writer, Volume 39, Part 1 (2025), Her Locks Unveiled… (2023), and two collections: In Conversation (2022) and Say It with a Haiku (2024).

Instagram: @jjsmuse | Facebook: JJ’s Muse

April Winstock – Performer

As a Speech and Language Therapist, April spent years helping others to communicate. At 70 she began writing CNF. Now 73, April writes spontaneous, often funny poems for strangers, on public transport, cafés, parks. She loves performing at open mics, believing in their power to foster community, connection and conversation.

Rishika Williams – Performer

I am a poet, performer and cultural producer working across two central strands. The first is long-form and performance poetry addressing violence against women and girls (VAWG), drawn from lived experience of abduction and sexual violence. The second is Sindhi heritage: Language, Partition, Displacement / Loss of homeland. I explore this through poetry, performance and community work. Both my families left Hyderabad, Sindh, around Partition. Alongside my writing I produce participatory South Asian literary and heritage events under Sindh Arts UK, and I am studying for an MA at the Poetry School.

Instagram: @rishikathepoet

Simon Maddrell – Performer

Simon Maddrell is a writer, editor & educator. His debut, lamping wild rabbits from Out-Spoken Press, is Highly Commended in the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection. Since 2020, he’s had seven pamphlets published and appeared in Gutter, Magma, Poetry Wales, The London Magazine, Stand, The Rialto, and others.

Website: www.simonmaddrell.com | Instagram: @simonmaddrell | Facebook: @simonmaddrellpoetry | LinkedIn: simonmaddrell | Bluesky: simonmaddrell.bsky.social

Accessibility

Our Events space is located on the ground floor of our office. We have a wheelchair ramp at the side entrance of the building. We also have an accessible toilet by the side entrance.

If you have any access requirements, please email events@societyofauthors.org

Feeling unwell?

We recommend the following:

• Staying home if you’re feeling unwell or have flu-like symptoms
• Washing your hands when coming in from the outdoors and / or before touching your face
• Applying alcohol hand sanitiser (we will have these on site)
• We advise attendees to wear a face mask if they feel comfortable doing so

Tickets 

£9.50 for SoA Members

£19.50 for Non-Members

Booking

Book your place using the booking from below. Places are limited.

Please read our event booking Terms and Conditions: https://societyofauthors.org/legal-privacy/event-terms/