Skip to main content

Dear Reader --

Dear Reader --

In December 2017, a new open mic night arrived in Worcester City Centre. Founded and hosted by Charley Barnes, Dear Listener spent twelve months making a name for itself as a loud and unashamedly sweary but safe space for poets to voice their grievances, concerns, and feelings - oh, so many feelings. In the first twelve months of running Dear Listener, Charley heard fresh and familiar voices alike grow in confidence and capability - so, Charley thought, why not try to replicate that on an even larger scale?

And here we are - Dear Reader.

From January 4th, 2019, Charley will be opening her digital inbox to all manner of poetic voices - whether you've performed at Dear Listener or not. This isn't intended to be a space for open mic regulars but rather an entirely new space for anyone, no matter their experience or background, to come and share their poetry.

Over the coming months, Charley hopes to fill these online pages with poetry galore, and that's where you come in...

Dear Reader already has a sparkly Submissions Guidelines page to guide you through the process of submitting work here. So, if you'd like to be involved, then we'd like to hear from you. Please take a look through our guidance page before submitting and, if you've got any questions hanging about after that, please feel free to email them to us: dearreadersubmissions@gmail.com

We look forward to hearing from you!

- Charley

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time
93 comments
Read more

Smoking and Swearing by Ian Manson

He’s stood outside, he’s on his break. He’s unsure whether to be smoking or swearing. He decides on both. Inhale. Fuuuck! Inhale. Fuuuck! A person, a visitor, or a patient. Heading to the hospital, sees his scrubs and scowls. “ It’s not very professional for a nurse to be smoking and swearing. ” But he doesn’t care. He’s already done his good deed for the morning and by midnight he’ll have done a dozen more. Yesterday was a paltry four. Tomorrow’s shift will be five or two or maybe eight, and another night of finishing late. Inhale. Fuuuck! He breathes a cloud of smoke. Watches it swirling, ascending, a spirit en-route to heaven. The person’s saintly sanctimony means nothing to him. Because he’s on his break. And he’s smoking, and he’s swearing. --- Originally from Scotland, Ian has lived and worked in Worcestershire for the last 11 years. He can normally be found performing his poetry and prose at events on the Worcester spoken word scene
24 comments
Read more

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

  —Dick Allen, “B&B”    Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television.  News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like  to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying  groceries up a flight of stairs  until I’m too drained to care  which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including  Escape Envy  (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021),  I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and  The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in  Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review,  and other journals. An ex-c
1 comment
Read more