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 Friday 9th October 2026 at The Playhouse, Kiwi's Brew Bar, Portrush (7:30pm - 9:15pm)
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PUB POETRY AT SWELL FESTIVAL 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
We are totally thrilled to be part of this beautifully curated community event ✨
And we have a theme !!
People
Poems often speak to the human presence in many forms - individuals, crowds, communities, relationships, encounters, memories.
Poems speak to ‘People’ - the ones who shape us, pass through us, stay with us, or slip away. Our connection to people is what makes us human. These connections can bring us profound joy or deepest sorrow.
We want to hear about those moments of connection, someone you met just once, someone who has been with you your whole life, or someone who passes through your days unnoticed.
“We’re working every dread day that is given us,
feeling like the person people meet really isn’t us.
Like we’re gonna buckle underneath the trouble,
Like any minute now the struggle’s gonna finish us.
And then we smile at all our friends…
There is so much peace to be found in people’s faces”
- Kae Tempest, ‘People’s Faces’
Guest Poet ✨
We are so very excited to welcome Colin Hassard to Pub Poetry as our guest poet for the Swell Festival, Colin is a poet from Banbridge, Co. Down. He has twice been Ulster Poetry Slam Champion and has been longlisted four times for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. His debut poetry collection ‘Age of the Microwave Dinner’ was released in 2021 through Doire Press.
Would you like to join us to LISTEN or join us ON STAGE at our Swell Pub Poetry event ?
🍷👂🏻To listen - just show up (7:30pm at The Playhouse, Kiwis, Portrush on Friday 9th October 2026).
🎤To read - send your poem (one only) on our ‘People’ theme to info@pubpoetry.co.uk by Friday 2nd October 2026. We’ll confirm if your poem has been chosen on or before 5th October 2026.
🫶Free Event …everyone welcome 🫶
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."