We return on Friday 7th November for another Purely Poetry open mic at Crescent Arts Centre.

Come join us for another night of live poetry, created by YOU. Share your work, listen to others, and enjoy the craic in a laid back, supportive and appreciative environment.

We love hearing your work, and we especially love new blood: first- time readers welcomed, all poets of all styles and experience welcomed as well!

If you want to read, we'll have a sign up table at the front. Spaces are limited, so it's first come, first served. We give readers a max of seven minutes each to allow everyone equal time and opportunity. 

Visit here for the Facebook event page.
Doors 9pm.  Start 9.30pm.  £4.   B.Y.O.

It was a successful local heat of the All Ireland Poetry Slam, with amazing work throughout all the rounds.This was something special.

Thank you to all our entrants, all our audience, and to Crescent Arts Centre for an amazing night of poetry. Indeed, than you for supporting us for the last three years, we had a great third birthday!

Well done to our finalists, Stephen Omar Gharbaoui, Jenny Cleland, Chris McLaughlin and our winner, 2014 Slam Champion, David Braziell!

David is certainly on something of a roll, winning the Bangor slam at Aspects Festival last week as well. We wish him all the best in the final in Kilkenny next month. And we have to feel for Chris; this is his third time in coming second, and he is definitely one of our top poets out there.

We also want to thank and congratulation the other semi-finalists: Megan Reeves, Lara Sunday, Katy Waller and Patricia Devlin-Hill. Well done!

We've been to a few slams around Ireland now with this competition, and heard a lot of great poets. But without doubt, when it comes to the actual craft of poetry, the composition and use of language, it's our feeling that the Belfast scene is the strongest out there. A long time criticism of slam poetry is that it's gimmicky: poorly-written, hammy, shouted verse. And while of course some of that will always be present in any spoken word scene, we feel we're happily proven the critics wrong. Thanks to all of you for sharing your work last night.

Our next event is Friday 7th November, returning to your normal open mic night. We hope to see you there.

We're delighted to have had Deirdre Cartmill and Maria McManus read recently at the National Poetry Day celebrations in the Irish Writers' Centre down in Dublin. Deirdre and Maria, representing Lagan Press, joined a fleet of other Irish poets for an excellent night of celebration and writing. Thank you to the IWC for hosting them.

Congratulations to Karen Mary Legrand, Stephanie Conn, Ciara McGuigan and David Braziel on winning Translink's Life's Better Haiku Competition!

Their poems will be displayed in Translink bus and train stations across the province. Pictured alongside the winners are Chelley McLear from Community Arts Partnership and Colin Dardis from Poetry NI. (Sadly David couldn't make the photo shoot.)

The winning haiku are below:

Stephanie Conn                               David Braziel                
The way the sunlight                         Sun on dusted glass,
tilts in the late afternoon                     a seat beside a stranger;
transforms all of this.                           I’m inside my book. 

Ciara McGuigan                               Karen Legrand                             
Scrunchy wee ticket                           Hopping on and off,
that can take you anywhere,               no destination in mind,
but mainly to work.                            but freedom in sight.

You can hear Stephanie, along with one of the judges, Poetry Ni's Colin Dardis, be interviewed on Good Morning Ulster about the competition, here.