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Poems are for people: an archival workshop on poetry in political magazines
12th December, 6-8pm
Poems are for people to write, as they live; they are a way to share experiences and move others. We [...] striv[e] to create poems which are accessible to the people and responsible to the struggle
- Anonymous women of the Weather Underground, Sing a Battle Song (1975)
Join weekend in the Writers’ Room for an archival workshop on poetry in political magazines. We’ll read and discuss examples from feminist periodicals like Spare Rib and Red Rag, along with publications from the prisoner solidarity movement and the student movement. Bring a pen and a notebook, and feel free to bring your own examples of poems published in political magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, zines and periodicals. We’ll provide copies of poems for discussion. The workshop will be led by Fintan Calpin and Catherine Kelly, residents at The Writers’ Room for December, and editors of weekend, a new magazine for poetry. Tickets are free, but you can make an optional donation to the printing costs of weekend’s first issue.
Go to the link in our bio to register. All welcome!
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A Collective Reading of Midwinter Day by Bernadette Mayer
21st December, 2-5pm
Now I’ve said this love it’s all I can remember
Of Midwinter Day the twenty-second of December
For the winter solstice, a collective reading of Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day.
We’ll read (most of) Mayer’s epic poem about a daily routine, which takes place entirely on 22nd December 1978. Copies provided, no reading in advance required. Everyone welcome!
Tickets are free but you can make an optional donation to our print costs. Link in bio to register. Weekend For our residency at the Writers’ Room, we’re working on the first issue of a new poetry magazine, weekend.
As we put together the issue, we’re hosting a couple of events to read and talk about poetry
together. We’re interested in why grassroots political publications so often feature poetry and in what happens when we get together and read poetry. What kind of an event is poetry anyway? And what kind of a community is a poetry community? How do we write poems responsible to our revolutionary struggles? As Jack Spicer wrote to the editors of Floating Bear, Amiri Baraka and Diane Di Prima: “I don’t understand what you’re doing as you don’t seem to be particularly interested in either poetry or politics.” Which was either uncalled for or called for. weekend are Catherine Kelly and Fintan Calpin. Fintan Calpin is a poet and critic from London. His first collection, Terminal City, came out with Veer2 in 2025.