What’s on at Ware Poets?
Our monthly poetry evenings include a popular open-mic session as well as fabulous guest poets. Everyone is welcome to bring a poem for the open mic, but please read one poem only and avoid lengthy ones.
Maggie Butt & Maggie Harris
The Two Maggies
One was born in Guyana, the other in London, but their different perspectives illuminate shared concerns and issues. Whether they are writing about the natural world, the climate crisis, war, the plight of refugees or the power of women, their poems get right to the heart of the matter. They will both have their 7th collections published early in 2025.
The two Maggies take the long view, from their own ancestors into an uncertain future. They are both grandmothers (one a great-grandmother) and have both been Royal Literary Fund Fellows, who share a deep love of language and playfulness with form.
Maggie Brookes-Butt’s New and Selected poems Wish includes poems from her six previous collections – about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love. They are gathered here alongside bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world.
Maggie Harris’s new collection I Sing with the Green Hearts is published by Seren in February. It is rebellious, open-hearted and world-inhabiting with a vibrant and rich verbal pallette which embraces a range of Englishes.
It sings for forests and nature and people, loud, clear and sweet. The greenheart of the collection’s title references Guyana’s hardwood tree, used throughout the world, whilst ‘green’ and ‘heart’ echo the importance of our ecology and our emotional response to how nature has been and is colonised by our needs.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
New Year celebration
New Year celebration: Entirely Open Mic
This is our annual open mic evening where we focus on showcasing local poetry and spoken word talent. It’s a friendly, welcoming and celebratory space, so feel free to bring along one or two pieces, either by yourself or someone else. We want everyone to have a chance to read, so think in terms of a 5-6 minute slot maximum, including any introduction you may want to give – though you’re welcome to have something else up your sleeve in case there’s any spare time left at the end!
Be ready to enjoy the poetry, spoken word, a drink from the bar and some great company.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Stuart Handysides
Stuart Handysides grew up in the Midlands but lived in south east England for many years. He began writing as a general practitioner, continued while working as an editor of medical publications, and found himself writing poetry. His poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies and had some success in competitions. His play Gleaming for an Instant was performed online in 2020. He ran the Ware Poets competition for 11 years.
His new collection 'the last one picked' is due out with Indigo Dreams at the end of 2025. These poems reflect on time itself and points in time, times past and passing; places and passions; political and social change; art and music; childhood, work and ageing; growing up in a deeply religious family; love, loneliness and death, of course; the unaccountable memories and dreams that fail to disappear.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Imogen Wade
Imogen Wade is a poet from Essex. She won the National Poetry Competition 2023 for her poem 'The Time I Was Mugged in New York City'. Her work has been acknowledged by competitions such as the Ware Poets Prize (which she won in 2023), the New Poets Prize, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Poetry Review, PN Review, Basket Magazine and The London Magazine, amongst others. She has been featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and BBC Radio Essex. She balances her time between writing and working in the mental health sector. She can be found on Instagram @imogen_wade_poetry
Her debut poetry collection Girl, Swooning will be published by Corsair in March 2026 and we’re delighted to be celebrating it in Ware.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Zain Rishi
Zain Rishi is a writer and bookseller from Birmingham. He writes about the relationship between language and the body. He won the 27th annual Ware Poets Competition, was placed third in the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Wales Award 2024-25. His work has appeared in Magma, Wildness, New Writing Scotland, Gutter, Propel and various anthologies. His debut pamphlet, Noon, is forthcoming with The Emma Press in February 2026 and we’re looking forward to celebrating it when he comes to Ware.
Two brothers wrestle, a bird lies in a young boy’s hand, an entire field lives within the eye of a needle.
"Noon is a sparkling debut from Birmingham-born poet Zain Rishi, exploring home, family and faith. From the heat of the school relay and his great-grandmother’s Kashmiri chai to the image of a young man kissing a city goodbye, these poems chart a coming-of-age journey across place, sexuality and family ties. Rich in its interrogation of language and inheritance across generations, Noon announces Zain Rishi as one of the UK’s most exciting new voices.”
Photo of Zain by Christa Holka Photography.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Mary Mulholland
Mary Mulholland is the author of the elimination game (Broken Sleep Books, 2025), What the sheep taught me (Live Canon, 2022) and two collaborations with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo - All About Our Mothers and All About Our Fathers (Nine Pens, 2022, 2023). Her work has been widely published - 14 Magazine, Magma, Candlestick Press, and anthologised, such as in the Leeds University Virginia Woolf Anthology. She's also been placed and listed in many competitions, including Write Out Loud, Ware Poets, Kent & Sussex, the National, and the Bridport Prize. Mary Founded the poetry platform Red Door Poets and is a founder editor of The Alchemy Spoon.
Photo © Xavier Bonfill
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Jackson Phoenix Nash
Jackson Phoenix Nash (he/him) is a queer transgender poet and lecturer from Essex. His work explores life as a trans man, working class identity, mental health, and the body. His writing has been published in Magma, Propel, Under the Radar, Rattle, Channel, and many more. His poems have also been included in the anthologies Ware Poets Competition Anthology, eff-able, Transmasculine Poetics, and Propel Anthology: 2022 - 2024.
In 2025 he won third prize in the Magma poetry competition and was highly commended in the Ware Poets Competition. His poem ‘Call me Boy on Saturdays’ won the Rattle Ekphrastic Competition. Some People are Trains, Jackson’s debut pamphlet, was published by Little Betty in 2024. He was diagnosed in adulthood with ADHD and dyslexia, an experience which has been both challenging and liberating, and which continues to shape his creative process. He has a PhD in Gender Studies and teaches at the Open University.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Daljit Nagra
Daljit Nagra is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of Society of Authors, a PBS New Generation Poet, presenter of the weekly Poetry Extra on Radio 4 Extra,.
Daljit Nagra, MBE, has published four poetry collections, all with Faber & Faber, which have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award, and been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and twice for the TS Eliot Prize. His latest collection indiom was a PBS Choice.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Daljit Nagra's visit is part of a Ware Poets collaboration with Presdales and Chauncy Schools. We are very grateful for the support of Ware Town Council.
Clare Best
Clare Best has published a ground-breaking prose memoir The Missing List (Linen Press 2018) three full collections of poetry and various pamphlets and collaborative works. Her first full collection Excisions (Waterloo 2011) was a finalist for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. The London Magazine said of her third collection Beyond the Gate (Worple Press 2023): ‘With this book Best reaches a level of poetic achievement that places her amongst the first rank of poets at work in the English language.’ She is currently writing in response to a family archive and working on several collaborative projects with musicians and visual artists. New work has appeared recently in Finished Creatures, 14 Magazine, and Poetry Salzburg Review.
Clare is an Associate Lecturer with The Open University and a Tutor for The Arvon Foundation. In 2021, whilst holding a Fellowship at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, she wrote libretti for operas with composers Amy Crankshaw and Michael Bascom. She lives in East Suffolk, England.
The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.
Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:
Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.