What’s on at Ware Poets?
Keith Jarrett
Keith Jarrett’s work explores Caribbean British identity, religion and sexuality. A multiple poetry slam champion, he was selected for the International Literary Showcase as one of 10 outstanding LGBT writers in the UK. His poem, ‘From the Log Book’, was projected onto St. Paul’s Cathedral and broadcast as a commemorative installation. His play, Safest Spot in Town, was performed at the Old Vic and aired on BBC Four. Selah, his poetry collection, was published in 2017. Keith teaches at NYU in London, is a Poetry Society trustee, and he is completing his debut novel.
“lyrically rich poems, charged with emotion, passion and lots of humour” - Sabotage
“articulate, erudite and well-informed... his beat reminiscent of Linton Kwesi Johnson and the dub poets of the eighties, of rap artists emergent since the nineties, and – of the most celebrated poets of the twentieth century.” – BroadwayBaby
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 on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Hetty Cliss & Damen O’Brien
We’re excited to welcome two poets this evening, both winners of our Ware Poets Competition 2024. Damen O’Brien won First Prize and Hetty Cliss won the Sonnet Prize as well as two commendations. Damen is visiting from Australia, so this is a rare opportunity to hear him read in Britain.
Hetty Cliss is a poet and spoken word artist from the Fens in East Anglia and a graduate of UEA's Creative Writing MA. Her poems can be found in fourteen poems, Propel Magazine, Bi+ Lines, on NewWriting.Net and elsewhere. She won the Ware Poets Sonnet Prize in 2024 and her poems 'Letting Things Lie' and 'Best Not to Bring It Up' were commended in the Ware Poets 2024 main competition.
Her debut poetry pamphlet is forthcoming with fourteen poems in March 2025.
Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning Australian poet. Damen's prizes include The Moth Poetry Prize, the Magma Judge's Award, the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition, the Welsh International Poetry Competition, Ware Poets Competition 2024 and many more. His poems can be found in Live Encounters, Dust, Aesthetica Literary Journal and Arc Poetry Magazine. Damen's latest book of poetry is Walking the Boundary (Pitt Street Poetry, 2024).
There will be a reduced open mic slot this evening, but if you have a poem you’d like to read, do bring it and we will accommodate you if we can.
Tickets on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Luca Spiller and Amir Darwish
Tonight we welcome two poets from the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature, a UK-based literary magazine edited by migrant writers and poets of the world.
Luca Spiller is an Italian poet based in London. He holds a master's degree in forced migration. Driven by years of living across several countries and working with migrants, he explores concepts such as identity, belonging, and journey in his work.
Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet & writer of Kurdish origin who lives in London. Born in Aleppo in 1979, he came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003.
His work has been published and anthologised worldwide. His poetry was translated into Arabic, Bengali, Estonian, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish, amongst other languages. He was part of several radio programmes, including BBC 4, BBC World Service and Refugee Radio. Amir was invited and attended literary and poetry festivals worldwide, including Finland, India, Italy, Turkey, Morocco, and Estonia.
His two collections of poetry are Dear Refugee (Smokestack, 2019) & Don’t Forget the Couscous (Smokestack, 2015).
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 on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Pascale Petit
Pascale Petit was born in Paris and lives in Cornwall, she is of French, Welsh and Indian heritage. Her debut novel, My Hummingbird Father, was published by Salt in 2024. She has published nine poetry collections, four of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Her seventh, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017), won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the inaugural Laurel Prize and was the Poetry Book Society Choice. Her eighth, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, and for Wales Book of the Year. Her ninth collection, Beast, published by Bloodaxe in April 2025, won a Society of Authors Arthur Welton Award while in progress.
We are delighted to celebrate Pascale’s new collection Beast, in which mythic and familial beasts roam the swamps and moors. These spirits of the wild haunt the Camargue of Provence, the limestone Causses and gorges of the Languedoc, Indian tiger forests, the Amazon rainforest, and her home by Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Some of these remote places are vestiges of earth’s pristine habitats, while other wildernesses are encaged in cellars of Paris, along with the world’s last species. Their essence is evoked in lithe and luxurious lines sometimes compressed as a trapped animal.
In Beast, an estranged father reappears as a hunter, while Maman is an orb spider or a grand piano; both are predators. And there are earthly beasts – wild horses and bulls, lammergeiers, bee-eaters and catfish, remnants of a vanishing natural world. Beast asks if survival is possible in an abusive family and on an abused home planet, with trials such as climate change, childhood trauma and war. These poems face difficult challenges and insist that making art is an act of love and hope, and there are joyful lyrics celebrating the ineffable beauty of endangered species.
Author photo credit Derrick Kakembo
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 on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition 2025 prize-giving
Everyone is welcome to this informal and celebratory event. There will be readings of our competition's winning and commended poems, followed by a special reading from this year’s judge Hannah Copley.
For more details about the 2025 Competition and Hannah Copley, see https://warepoets.org/competition-2025.
No open mic this month.
Tickets should be bought in advance [link will be available soon] but there will also be availability on the door. Price: £5 general; £3 for students 19-24; Free to ages 18 and under.
Free entry for Competition prizewinners and commended poets.
Troy Cabida
Troy Cabida is the author of Neon Manila (Nine Arches Press, 2025), Symmetric of Bone (fourteen poems, 2024) and War Dove (Bad Betty Press, 2020). His work has been published by Seaford Review, TLDTD Journal, and bath magg, anthologised in State of Play, Bi+ Lines, and 100 Queer Poems, commissioned by Tiffany & Co., The R.A.P. Party, and Small Green Shoots, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Poetry 2024.
We’re delighted to welcome Troy and to celebrate his new collection Neon Manila, an exploration of the queer Filipino body in all of its skin and glitter. Looking at pop music, fashion, jewellery, dating mishaps, and everyday London life, the poems in this collection seek a better grasp of the relationships we build with ourselves, of the internal as constantly contoured by the external.
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 on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.
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.
There will be a reduced open mic slot this evening, but if you have a poem you’d like to read, do bring it and we will accommodate you if we can.
Tickets on the door: £5; £3 for students under 24; Free to ages 18 and under.