As the UK eases out of lockdown, the prospect of in-person poetry events is on the horizon. But the appetite for live poetry can’t wait that long! And the phenomenal success of virtual poetry events around the world over the last year or so has kept us all going. One highlight of our fundraising campaign was the live event at the end of January. To be able to enjoy sets from Rachel Long and Luke Wright was a real joy, and Tony Walsh’s special pre-recorded set had us all wiping tears from our cheeks. It was testament to what Write Out Loud can achieve when we bring the poetry community together.

 

So, we’re launching a new series of Spoken Sessions, available exclusively to patrons of our new Patreon channel. They will be recorded over Zoom and broadcast at 19.00 UK time on the second Thursday of every month, starting on 13 May.

We’ve launched three tiers on the Patreon channel:

1. £5 monthly– the standard subscription;
2. £7 monthly - solidarity subscription for those happy to add a donation;
3. A £3 subscription for any one of these:

• those unable to afford the £5 tier, or
• who donated to our fundraising campaign, or,
• are Kirklees residents.

Proof is not required.

For our first event, we’re delighted to have feature slots from Kirsten Luckins and Will Harris. We also have six open mic slots on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve a three-minute open mic slot, email matt@writeoutloud.net. We encourage applications from a diverse range of poets at all levels of their career.

If applying for the open mic, please note that we’ll be pre-recording this event over Zoom at 7pm on Monday 10 May – not to be confused with the broadcast date later that week! All you need to take part is a free Zoom account and a reliable internet connection.

 

As we continue to produce more content, we’ll introduce various levels of subscription on the Patreon channel. Alongside performance-based content, we want to produce more educational content and podcasts.

Your support will help us to generate a steady source of income. Write Out Loud as a core service will never disappear behind a paywall, but by charging for bonus content such as our Patreon channel, we’ll be able to grow and offer even more to the poetry eco-system.

 

Kirsten Luckins is a poet, performer, and creative producer from the north-east coast of England. Her poems and articles have appeared in magazines such as Mslexia, Under the Radar, Capsule Stories, Butcher's Dog, and Magma. Her third poetry collection, Passerine, was published by Bad Betty Press in February.

Will Harris is a writer of Chinese, Indonesian and British heritage, born and based in London. His début poetry book RENDANG (2020) is published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan University Press in the US. It was a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, and won the Forward prize for best first collection. He co-edited the spring 2020 issue of the Poetry Review with Mary Jean Chan.

The event will be hosted by Matt Abbott. Matt is a poet, educator, and activist from Wakefield. His début one-man show ‘Two Little Ducks’ earned 5* reviews at Edinburgh Fringe 2017 and on a UK theatre tour in 2018. The show’s poems were published as his debut collection by Verve Poetry Press in 2018. Matt was a patron for the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2020.