Writers Forum Workshop is pleased to host this listing of readings, exhibitions, performances, discussions, workshops and courses taking place on Kent’s innovative poetry scenes.
If you write innovative poetry and would like to share it with an interested audience, please consider attending Writers Forum Workshop’s in-person and virtual meetings.
See the bottom of the page for an FAQ, including how to get your own event listed here.
Key for colour coding:
| Blue: In-person event. |
| Pink: Online event featuring Kent-based poets or organisations. |
| Green: In-person event in Kent, with simultaneous online broadcast. |
Ongoing Exhibitions and Shows
February 2025
Saturday 15 February
| 3.30pm-5.30pm. | Writers Forum Virtual Workshop: Workshop for experimental poets to share their writing. All welcome. | Online via Zoom. | Free, registration required. |
Tuesday 18 February
| 8pm. | Abigail Parry: Reading for the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society’s monthly gathering, plus open mic session. | Royal Wells Hotel 59 Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, TN4 8BE. | £3 on the door for non-members. |
Monday 24 February
| 7pm. | MixMatched: Reincarnation & New Beginnings: Open mic & spoken word night offering 5 minute performance slots for any genre, including experimental, poetry, music, song, dance, storytelling, speech, comedy, burlesque, art/visual. LGBTQIA+ and Neurodivergent+ friendly. | The Mooring Cafe & Bar, Water Lane, Canterbury CT1 2NQ. | £3.50, bookable in advance. |
March 2025
Friday 8 March
| 6pm. | Origins Untold: gaze (a poetry reading): an evening of poetry from Black and LGBTQIA+ poets hosted by Josephine Carter and Ray Felix Carter with readings illuminating Black and queer perspectives on looking, seeming and being looked at. | The Folkestone Bookshop 70-72 Tontine Street Folkestone CT20 1JP. | Pay what you can, booking required. |
Saturday 15 March
| 3.30pm-5.30pm. | Writers Forum Virtual Workshop: Workshop for experimental poets to share their writing. All welcome. | Online via Zoom. | Free, registration required. |
Sunday 16 March
| 6:30pm. | Kent Talents Poetry Club: an evening of poetry with featured poets Nancy Charley, Cathy Richards, Setareh Ebrahimi and Trevor Breedon plus open mic. | Kent Talents Arts Centre, 5 Albion St, Broadstairs CT10 1LU. | £10, bookable in advance, or pay on the door. |
FAQ
Who updates this page?
The listing is primarily maintained and updated by Verity Rowsell, with assistance from other attendees of Writers Forum Workshop.
How can I get my event listed?
Contact us here with details of any readings or other events for this page, including a link to a webpage or social media post for the event if possible. Contact us when we’ve made a mistake also, please. Bear in mind:
- The listings are not always updated daily. To ensure that your event is posted in time to spread the word, please send information at least a week beforehand: the further in advance, the more useful the listing will be for you.
- The listings are for activities within the traditions or communities of innovative poetry – those that Writers Forum Workshop exists to further. We aim to be inclusive, incorporating cross-cultural and internationalist currents, and extending to celebrations of modernist precursors, but there are limits to what will be publicised here.
What do you mean by ‘innovative poetry’?
Broadly speaking, poetry that challenges the traditionally accepted definitions of the art form – work which might also be dubbed ‘experimental’, ‘avant-garde’, ‘modernist’, ‘postmodernist’, ‘neo-modernist’, etc. Such poetry can diverge from the conservative norm in many different directions – a personal view from Peter Philpott is online here. These scenes are constantly developing. In the UK, the last couple of decades have seen an increasing (though still frustratingly sporadic) acceptance of innovative poetry by universities, major publishers, literary prize-givers and other institutions. Simultaneously, the field has been enriched by a growing number of intersections between poetry communities, while women, non-binary, Black British and British Asian poets, as well as UK-based poets born overseas, have all become more prominent.
Can you guarantee that these events will be good?
We hope they will be, but we cannot take responsibility for the quality of events organised by other parties, or for the reliability of information made available to us by others. However, every event here is listed because it promises something of interest to those keen
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