Come along for a fun, relaxed evening where you can get as involved as much as you're comfortable with – as a poet, judge or enthusiastic audience member – and support local wordsmiths on the mic.
------------------
FEATURE POET: Hasib Hourani
SUPPORT FEATURE: Samson Bain-Morris
6:30pm - DOORS OPEN + SLAM SIGN-UP
7:00pm - POETRY BEGINS
ENTRY
$10 - standard
$5 - unwaged/student/concession
------------------
Sign up at the door when you arrive if you'd like to perform. Everyone is welcome, from bedroom poets to experienced performers.
Three-minute time limit, no props, music or costumes, jump up on stage with a mic and share your original poem with a live and engaged audience. Rapping counts as poetry and some singing is allowed, but not for the majority or all of the poem.
Random people from the audience become the judges, and the highest-scoring poet wins! 1st, 2nd & 3rd place prizes to be awarded!
But remember: The points are not the point, the point is poetry!
------------------
VENUE
Side Door Theatre is on Crown St in Wollongong. It has a small door that can be found directly across the road from the Atchison St entry to Spotlight. It's a four-minute walk from Wollongong Train Station and a two-minute walk from the nearest free bus stop. Free parking can be found on surrounding streets, starting with Atchison St, or there is paid parking nearby in the mall.
Side Door Theatre is a licensed venue, there will be drinks and snacks available for sale, please do not bring in outside alcohol. There are a number of toilets inside the venue.
Entry to the venue is down four steps from the front door and is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible. Please reach out to us if you have access needs and you'd like to discuss entry into the venue.
------------------
FEATURE ACT
Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer living on unceded Gadigal Country. His debut book, rock flight, was released in 2024 and won the Mary Gilmore Award and the NSWLA Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. It was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Hasib is poetry editor of Loom and is currently working on his second book, a novel that will be released in 2027.
SUPPORT FEATURE
Samson Bain-Morris is a nonbinary interdisciplinary artist and actor, born and residing on Gadigal land, but currently studying on Dharawal Country. They are in their fourth year of study at the University of Wollongong, somehow, and they just can’t stop pouring their silly little heart out in the form of notes-app poetry.
------------------
We acknowledge our events take place on the land of the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal nation and pay our respects.
293-297 Crown Street Wollongong New South Wales 2500, Australia