Pub Poetry is a creative collective on the Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland sharing and enjoying spoken word around a fire in a cosy pub , we moved to online during the pandemic and since 2022 have been hosting live events back in the pub.
Pub Poetry
Poetry helps us communicate what we want to say and talk about what moves us. It connects us beyond our everyday and beyond our difference and unites us in our quest to live fully, honouring the joy, the pain and the in-between. Our hope is that we can create a space to listen and bear witness to each others lives on a regular basis., we’ve been doing this online during the Pandemic and now making the journey to a our local pubs. We’ll create this space wherever we have opportunity to however and if that means going back to Zoom or doing both live and virtual, then we’ll give it all a go.
So if you write poetry, then please consider a submission to our next event or if you like being around poetry, then please join us at our next event to be part of our audience.
Our next event is on 25 January 2025 at Kiwis Brew Bar, Portrush (7:30pm - 9:00pm)
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“Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible“
Katherine May
Our Next Event!
Date: Saturday 25th January 2025
Time: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Venue: Kiwis Brew Bar, 49 Main St, Portrush, N.Ireland
Theme: Wintering
Hosts: Sophie Irwin & Lynda Gibson
Join Us!
Will you join us at our Winter event on Saturday 25th January 2025, 7:30pm in Kiwis Brew Bar Portrush? To read your work or to listen and enjoy.
Guest Poet
We are delighted to welcome David Atkinson as our guest poet, David is a long standing friend of Pub Poetry and will open our evening by sharing his own work and reflections on ‘Wintering’. An Irish born poet, David is originally from Belfast and now living in Coleraine. His first collection “Thomas” was published by Lapwing in 2005. His second collection “Black Eyed Peace” was published as a free eBook in 2014 and has now been downloaded over 3000 times.
We would be delighted to welcome a further 6-8 poets to read on our theme – will you join us ?
Submissions to read are open to anyone (brand new or experienced) who would like to read their poetry relating to our theme, just get in touch by sending your poem to info@pubpoetry.co.uk before Sunday 19th January.
Wintering
Winter is more than just the noun for the season between autumn and spring. It is also a verb ‘the act of spending or passing winter’. How do we spend our winter? Do we embrace it with its celebration of Christmas and Valentine’s and New Year? Or do we hibernate, rest and retreat, pull the curtains, light the fire and wait for spring? It is the season that straddles the old and the new, endings and beginnings. It is a season of solstice, of darkening and lightening, vulnerability and resilience. Whether you love it or loathe it, it has inspired many great poems Mary Oliver – ‘White Eyes’, Billy Collins – ‘Snow Day’, or Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 97’.
Our personal winterings (forced or invited) often hold revelation and deep rooting for our later re-emergence.
“Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.” – Katherine May
What have you got to say about wintering?
A Musical Submission
The extremely talented folk over at North Coast Trad will be joining us at our next Pub Poetry event and have composed a piece of music on our theme of ‘Wintering’. We are so very delighted that they have chosen to perform this for us at our event on 25th January. What a truly generous night of music and poetry this will be I hope you can join us to listen and enjoy something very special.
To come along….
Just come along on the night at 7:30pm, we’ll be at Kiwis Brew Bar, Portrush (49-51 Main Street), buy your favourite tipple and enjoy a gorgeous evening of truth and hope and connection about what matters.
What else have we been doing?
In Summer 2021 we ran our ‘Here is the World’ project where poets wrote about living through the pandemic and impact on their mental health and artists illustrated their words, culminating in a beautiful online exhibition in Sept 2021. You can find out more by clicking here.
Who’s invited?
Everyone! Come to listen, come to read, come to chat… You’ll be made very welcome at the Pub of Poetry.
Cost?
Our regular events have been free and will continue to be unless we need to fund a special event as part of ‘Pub Poetry Presents’ this will be advertised separately.
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”