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.

clarebest.co.uk

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.

Karen Downs-Barton is an award-winning Anglo-Romani poet based in Wiltshire. Her debut collection, Minx (Chatto and Windus / Penguin, 2025), a memoire in poetry, won the prestigious John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet, Didicoy (Smith|Doorstop) won the 2022 International Poetry Book and Pamphlet competition was a 2023 Poetry Book Society recommendation. Karen has appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Verb, headlined Ledbury Festival, Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival, Deptford Literature Festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival. Poetry from her PhD thesis exploring the development of identity through experimental and multilingual poetry won the Cosmo Davenport-Hines poetry competition. Karen has written for the i newspaper and her poetry has appeared in Ink, Sweat, and Tears; The North; Tears in the Fence, Rattle amongst others, is widely anthologised and has been translated into Spanish, Russian and Farsi.

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.

Tribute to David Perman - an open mic poetry celebration 

This month is an entirely open mic evening with a difference. We will celebrate one of the co-founders of Ware Poets, David Perman, who died in August 2026. David was a journalist, broadcaster, writer, poet, publisher of Rockingham Press and Interviews Editor of Acumen journal. He was a true champion of poetry and passionate about history, heritage and conservation. He played a huge part in the life of Ware and was instrumental in saving much of its historic architecture from demolition. 

We encourage you to celebrate David’s life at the open mic, by reading your own work, work by other poets, and also to share any memories you have of him. 

You do not need to have known David to take part. By reading, performing and listening to poetry we’re keeping his legacy alive.

Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door:

Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.

Leanne Ellul is a poet, prose writer, and playwright whose work spans both adult and children’s literature. She was named Best Emerging Author at the 2016 Malta National Book Prize, and in the same year was listed in the Commonwealth Young Achievers Book. Her poetry collections include L-Inventarju tal-Kamra l-Kaħla (Merlin, 2020), Bjuda (Aġenzija Żgħażagħ, 2022), and Il-Manifest tas-Siġar (EDE Books, 2022). Her poems have been published in adda, Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, Columbia Journal, The Dallas Review, Voice & Verse, The Poetry Lighthouse, Tummy Ache, F Magazine, and Circumference, and have been translated into Arabic, English, German, Croatian, Frisian, Italian, Greek, and Slovenian. She is also the author of two award-winning young adult novels, Gramma (Merlin, 2015) and be;n il-kmiem (Merlin, 2025). Leanne lectures in Maltese language, literature, and creative writing, and is the Artistic Director of Inizjamed, a Malta-based literary NGO that organises the annual Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival.

Photo by Kenneth Scicluna.

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.

Gustav Parker Hibbett is a Black poet, essayist, and MFA dropout. Their debut poetry collection, High Jump as Icarus Story (Banshee Press, 2024), won the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, among other honours. They were the 2025 Commissioned Writer for Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, and they have recently completed a PhD in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin.

Photo credit Bríd O’Donovan

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.

Rupinder Kaur Waraich (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the West Midlands whose practice moves fluidly across writing, film and theatre. Rooted in the feminine gaze, her work interrogates the intersections of body, language, history, sexuality and spirituality, crafting spaces where memory, desire and inheritance intertwine. Her debut poetry collection, Rooh (2018), was published by Verve Poetry Press, followed by her second collection, Tigress with Wings (2026), published by Seren Books. Her poems and essays have appeared in a range of journals and magazines, including Wasafiri, 14 Poems, and Poetry Wales. Across all forms, her work is driven by an ongoing exploration of the artistic self as both vessel and reclamation.

https://rupinderkw.com/

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.

Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli is an Italian poet of Chilean descent. He won the Verve Poetry Competition 2025 and the Pat Kavanagh Prize 2025. His work was highly commended for the Forward Prize, longlisted for the National Poetry Competition, commended for the Ware Poets Competition 2026 and has appeared in several anthologies and publications such as MAGMA, And Other Poems, Seaford Review and fourteen poems. His debut pamphlet How to Repair an Echo is out with Oblique House.

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.

Caroline Smith studied Fine Arts (Sculpture) at Goldsmiths College. She now lives in Wembley where she works as the immigration and asylum caseworker for a London MP. Her poetry book, ‘The Immigration Handbook’ (Seren) was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and translated into Italian by Prof Paola Splendore and published by edizioni dell’asino.  

Smith has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including The Poetry Review, ARC Canada and ‘Staying Alive’ (Bloodaxe). Her work has been shortlisted or won prizes in poetry competitions, including the Alpine International, The Keats/Shelley, Indigo Dreams and The National Poetry Competition. She organises the 160+One Poetry Festival in Wembley and has given readings at Festivals and Universities around the world. Her work has been set to music by the British Argentinian composer, Silvina Milstein and performed on Radio 3 by The BBC Singers.

Her new collection, ‘Bycatch’ was published by Nine Arches Press in 2025 and is shortlisted for the Forward Prize 2026 (Best Collection). She is a 2025 Hawthornden Fellow.

 Instagram: carolinesmith845

Website: www.carolinesmithpoet.com

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.

Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition 2027: prize-giving celebration with Rachel Long

Everyone is welcome to this celebratory event to hear the readings of the winning and commended poems, followed by a special reading from competition judge Rachel Long.

Full details of the competition will be available when it launches in January 2027.

Rachel Long’s debut, My Darling from the Lions (2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, The Costa Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. She was born in London, and now lives in Margate. Her second collection, Sparrow on the Rooftop was published by Chatto & Windus, in June 2026.

No open mic this month.

Tickets can be bought in advance or on the door.

Entry prices: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.

Free entry for competition prizewinners and commended poets.

Sophia Argyris is of British-Greek heritage, born in Belgium. She has been placed in the Ledbury Prize and the Verve Poetry Competition, and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her work has been published widely, including in Banshee, Berlin Lit, Poetry Ireland Review and Poetry London. Her pamphlets include Heronless (Palewell Press) and Blood Tundra (Broken Sleep Books). Her debut collection will be published by Out-Spoken Press in May 2027.

 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.