The Bards of New Brighton exists to promote appreciation of poetry and to encourage people to write verse and read it out in front of a supportive audience.
The club, which has an open membership and charges no admission fees, meets on the second Monday of each month in the back room (the folk music room) of the Magazine pub in Magazine Brow, New Brighton.
The Bards were formed by local writer and journalist Steve Regan, of Victoria Road, nearly five years ago. For a while the group met in the Ginny (Little Brighton) pub but eventually moved to the Mags because it offered a bigger room.
All sort of poetry is read out at the Bards’ nights – humourous, political, spiritual, locally-themed, philosophical, and, of course, love poetry.
The atmosphere is lively and friendly. Whoever is compere on the night will often compliment you on your poetry, and there is a lot of friendly banter between the local poets.
These days Steve Regan is helped in the running of the Bards by Dave Costello, who lives in Liscard. Dave recently won first prize in the prestigious Welsh Poetry Competition.
The two men say they have been encouraged to see people grow in confidence and eloquence after coming regularly to the Bards of New Brighton to read, or “perform” their poetry.
Each poet gets to read in a four minute slot, and those who have a bit more to read will be given two such slots if they so wish.
So successful has been the Bards’ open and democratic style of performance poetry, that Steve and Dave have started a sister club in Liverpool, called The Liver Bards! This also offers open-floor live poetry – in the upstairs concert room of the Ship and Mitre pub, Dale Street, Liverpool city centre, L2 2JH. The Liverpool nights take place on the THIRD MONDAY of each month, starting 8.15pm.
The New Brighton Bards poetry nights at the Magazine pub starts at 8pm on the SECOND MONDAY of each month.Upcoming dates for 2011 are: 12th September; 10th October; 14th November; and 12th December. All are welcome.
More of Steve Regan’s writing about New Brighton on his “Last Resort” blog on the Liverpool Echo website http://steveregan.merseyblogs.co.uk/
Steve invented the “Sam Brady” column on the old ORACLE Teletetext service. He still blogs as Sam Brady “The Man They Can’t Gag”
http://sambradyoracle.blogspot.com/
Follow him on Twitter @StephenJRegan
PICTURE CAPTIONS …
Part of the Bards’ reading lectern, which some poets prefer to use
BARDS’ founder Steve Regan