Brighton-based performance poet Susan Evans – pictured at last year’s Poetry Book Fair in London - is headlining a new poetry night in Aldershot on Thursday 25 January. The evening at the Gallery at West End Centre includes open-mic poetry – sign up on the night - and music, and will start at 8.15pm. 

The night will return on the last Thursday of each month in February and March, with other featured poets Robert Garnham and Tina Sederholm. It has been organised by Rodney Wood, who said of the arts centre venue: “North-east Hampshire is a wasteland as far as poetry and open mics are concerned and this seems an ideal place: it can comfortably sit 50 people, the lighting and acoustics are good, there’s a bar, 10 minutes from the train station (55 minutes from Waterloo) and there’s a decent car park.”

Rodney, who also co-comperes Write Out Loud Woking, recalls organising another poetry event way back in 1984 at the West End Centre, that included poets Charles Johnson and Lynford French (from Jamaica), Ken Smith, Anthony Thwaite, Matthew Sweeney, Gavin Ewart, and Peter Porter.

Tickets for Susan Evans plus singer-songwriter Bryony Dunn and open-mic poetry at Gallery Live in Aldershot are £5 and can be booked online. 

Rodney added that tickets for the first poetry night were free if booked online: "At the end of the booking process when it asks for voucher/discount code enter POETS which will credit you the cost of the ticket."