Sunday Poetry Club

The poetry world is full of workshops for writing, and events for reading/performing or for Q&A’S or interviews, but not loads in the way of community space to come hang out and just poet around.

Sunday Poetry Club is a response to this: a facilitated real-world informal space to come together, share poetry things we love, and grow as a community.

It’s two hours a month to come hang out with poetry people, chat about poetry stuff, maybe write some things, and almost definitely make some friends.

Let’s swap poems that astound us, dive into the nuts and bolts of each other's writing practices, ask someone who's done it all those questions you've got about how to submit to lit mags or competitions or how to put together a pamphlet or collection, find your new favourite poetry lit, share your own experiences of challenges or hurdles you've faced, share your poems and your successes, write together, maybe find a new partner for some collaborative work, grab a tasty soft drink or a good beer from the bar and hang out and enjoy becoming part of a growing community of poetry pals.

Members are asked to bring a poem that’s resonated with them to share. Everyone is encouraged to bring collections, essays, pamphlets, magazines, and other poetry lit they’ve enjoyed and would like to talk about or recommend.

It’s gonna be pretty relaxed, with the option to spend more or less time on whatever the group wants, but as a rough guide:

The first 45 minutes are an opportunity to talk about all the lovely things people have brought and what we thought about them or how they impacted us, with the option to deep dive into individual poems and themes. (Think that workshop you went to where someone else’s response opened up whole new understandings into a poem for you.)

The second 45 minutes are an opportunity to share what’s happening within our own personal practice. This could be reflections on recent writing, responses to a workshop, discussions on writing process or putting together a submission or pamphlet or collection, questions we’re hoping someone can answer, good open mic nights or events attended recently, or any other chat about life in poetry-world. Here, too, there’ll be space for members to share some of their own work if they’d like to. (Only one piece though, as this is not a feedback workshop or salon - there’ll be other spaces for that.)

For the final 30 minutes we’ll return to some of the poems which stood out to us and spend some time writing in response in whatever way feels good. No pressure to write if anyone doesn’t want to, and members are free to work on their own projects if they’d rather.

After 3pm everyone’s welcome to stay and write or socialise if they’d like.

I can’t wait to meet you and grow this community together :)

Keep up to date with other poetry events and news from me, and become part of the Poet Notes community, over on my Substack: poetnotes.substack.com.

As a working class human I've come up against pay barriers all my life; if the monthly cost of these sessions presents a barrier for you please drop me an email.