Tag: Open Mic

Satellite of Love: A Celebration of SOL

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November 25th 2026 at The Loco Klub
Doors 7pm. Open Mic 7.30pm
Finish 10.30pm

After twelve years Satellite of Love will be taking a break.

On the 25th November 2026 we will be hosting our last event at the Loco Klub and we will not be running in 2027.

We shall be celebrating by bringing members of the team to the stage to share our poetry with you, along with a short open mic.

This gig will be dedicated to the Satellite of Love community that has sustained and made it what it is.
Tickets are free for this last Satellite and can be booked on the Headfirst site.

We really hope to see you there.

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Satellite of Love Presents: Stefan Mohamed & Sophie Dumont

At the Loco Klub 28th October 2026

Doors 7pm Open mic starts 7.30pm
Event finishes 10.30pm

Stefan Mohamed is an award-winning author, poet and creative writing tutor. He is the author of five novels, including surreal sci-fi detective mystery The House on Utopia Way, and five books of poetry.

His latest collection, The Revelation Tapes, came out this year with Broken Sleep Books. He lives in Bristol with his family and cat.
He is also a DJ. 

Sophie Dumont

Sophie Dumont is an award-winning poet and editor based in Bristol. Her debut poetry collection, Sculling, has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2026 and featured in The Guardian, Financial Times and The Sunday Times. Sophie’s poetry has won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize and the John Brooks Award and she’s held writing residencies along Bristol Harbourside and at Exeter Custom House. This October, Sophie was appointed Good Grief Festival’s first poet in residence.

sophiedumont.co.uk

Image: Jamie Dormer-Durling

Satellite of Love Presents: Sukina Noor & Open Mic

Sukina Noor: City Poet at the Loco Klub
23rd September 2026
Doors 7pm, Event Starts 7.30pm
Event Finishes 10pm

Sukina Noor is a poet, spoken-word artist, playwright, workshop facilitator and educator, event curator and public speaker. She is the current Bristol City Poet (2024 – 2026).

She has toured extensively across the UK, Europe, America and Africa performing, delivering poetry workshops, partaking in panel discussions and delivering lectures.

Sukina has facilitated creative writing workshops across the world empowering communities to use the written word as a tool for dialogue and as a means for accessing their authentic voice. Her workshops seek to explore the intersection between creativity and spirituality and awakening the voice of the heart. She has developed a series of poetry writing courses such as The Art of Speaking from the Heart, The Art of Writing Sacred Poetry and The Poetry of Female Mystics that she has delivered to international audiences and this summer led her first retreat in Portugal called The Healing Art of Sacred Writing.

Sukina made her theatre debut in 2016 in a production called Malcolm X at the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels (KVS) which was critically acclaimed. In 2017 and 2018 she led a project in collaboration with the theatre called Rise Up where she used poetry as a tool for dialogue and community cohesion in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Brussels. She was commissioned by KVS to write her first play called Afropean / Human Being that premiered at the theatre in February 2020.In 2017 she delivered a TEDx Talk on the healing potential of poetry exploring the ways in which the process of poem-making can have a therapeutic outcome.

Sukina holds a BA (Hons) Degree in English Literature and Caribbean Studies and has an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes where she is focusing on the intersection between spirituality, creativity and the healing potential in the poetry of the Sufi mystics.

She is currently training to become a Spiritual Empowerment Life Coach.

Sukina has amassed a loyal fan base due to her international performances, workshop facilitation and social media presence and her debut poetry collection Love and

Longing: Yearning for the Face of God was released in October 2023 and her spoken word album of the same name will be released in the Spring of 2025.

Satellite of Love Presents: Tom Denbigh & Iman Sultan West

July 22nd at the Loco Klub
Doors 7pm, event starts 7.30pm

Tom Denbigh is a Bristol-based poet and playwright. Exploring the queer experience alongside tales of friends and strangers, Tom’s writing toys with myth, devilish humour and absurdity to portray the bizarre and brilliant in normal life.

He is a producer at Milk Poetry, a BBC1Xtra Words First winner and has facilitated writing workshops for groups of students from the UK and abroad. Outside of poetry Tom has a PhD on plant roots and soil erosion. His first collection …and then she ate him is published with Burning Eye Books.

“… surrealism and spirituality go hand in hand with stark poems of the body and sexuality. Denbigh has a unique ability to weave narrative and humour through expansive poems which reframe and reconsider the everyday.”

Andrew Mcmillan

“A Tom Denbigh poem is a perfectly twisted fairytale. His precise, playful confidence, intrepid warps in language and acerbic imagination will make you realise your head and heart have been tugged into an adventure far from home.”

Jasmine Gardosi

‘Iman Sultan West is an artist, poet and cultural practitioner based in Bristol exploring how community can be bought together through expression and curiosity. Their poetry uses humour and rhythm to connect with heritage, neurodiversity, mental health and resistance.

Currently working as a freelance provenance researcher for natural history, Iman entangles reparative justice and an engrossed obsession with words to facilitate their annual Poetry Course with Shiiku Community.’

Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio)

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Satellite of Love & Chimes: Lyra Fest Open Mic


Loco Klub
Wednesday 22nd April
Doors 19:00. Event Start. 19:30 End 21:30.

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Bristol-based event Satellite of Love and Bath-based Chimes team up for an extended open mic at Lyra Festival, with feature performances from Elena Chamberlain and Alex Petkov. Sign up on the door to perform on the night, with a selection of spaces reserved for Bath-based poets.

Hosted by Aish Humphreys and Manganaro. 

Tickets £5

16+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio

All Lyra Fest venues are wheelchair accessible. Access Information Pack available at www.lyrafest.com.

Satellite of Love:

Satellite of Love Poetry and Spoken Word run monthly events, work-shops and writing retreats. Our monthly events at the Loco Klub offer a platform for local and touring poets, open mic and our Community Poem.

Chimes Poetry Night:

Come along to Chimes – Bath’s leading open mic poetry night. Since July 2023 we have been bringing performance opportunities and some of the UK’s best poets to spoken word enthusiasts in Bath. In Summer 2025 we published an anthology of our gorgeous community’s work, packed with poetry and even the cover designed by our poets.

Part of Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2026

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Satellite of Love Presents: Rosie Garland and Rowena Knight

Wednesday 25th March at the Loco Klub.
Doors 19:00 event starts at 19:30.
Event finishes at 22:30.

Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries, & Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. An award-winning poet, novelist and short story writer, she is frontwoman for post-punk band The March Violets. Poetry collection What Girls do the Dark (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize & latest collection This Is How I Fight was Observer Poetry Book of the Month. Her poetry and fiction – described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter” – looks beneath the skin to the multitudes inside: galaxies, creatures, wicked queens & fire – all itching & roaring to be seen.

Photo by Rachel Saunders

Rowena Knight’s poetry is influenced by her queerness, feminism, and upbringing in New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Magma, The Rialto, and The Emma Press Anthology of Love, among others. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize, and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and spoken word events across Bristol and London. Her pamphlet All the Footprints I Left Were Red is published by Valley Press. You can find her on Instagram @purple_fantail.

Photo of Rowena reading by Sam Cavender.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio)

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Community Poem March 2025

Each hand gestures to its own goblin

Well there it is…
Friends are friends for just a season-
Who the fuck is Alan?!
8000 days of pain, just you left,
whatever you do don’t anger the old Gods!!!
Lord drug my mind,
your salad won’t save you
I like words and CHOCOLATE!

Brexit worked so well,
I didn’t mean the previous line!
eeny meeny miney bollocks
Piss, liquid of life
It’s all a little to the left-
Urine, liquor of my soul,
each hand gestures to its own goblin
Birds’ nests from breakage
wee wee, source of my joy!

I want to dance naked under the disco ball
plush sofas, kush loafers, a quest for the best-
my parents voted me ‘Worlds best organ doner!’
They sent her in a Pringles can
with a couple dreamies love for the road
cinnamon cream cuts cinema kindly to taste,
soft laughing caking in sick time ‘cough’

I bought my car off vinted for €2.50,
one day I came home at lunch time and I heard a funny noise,
why do you keep talking about your hard wood floors
and why are socks so hard?
your mom.

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Satellite of Love Headliners May 28th 2025

At the Loco Klub 7pm for 7.30pm start

Bridget Hart + Elena Chamberlain

Bridget Hart (they/them) is a working class writer based in Bristol. Known for their cutting wit and quietly heart-breaking poems, Bridget has been performing for over a decade across the UK at festivals and events including Shambala, Boomtown,  Hit the Ode, Say Owt and Edinburgh Fringe.

They have published two collections of poetry: Chewing Gum (Small Press, 2021) and Better Watch Your Mouth (Burning Eye, 2017). Bridget has poems and short stories published by Comma Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Late Britain, Bluebird Anthology and more. 

Elena Chamberlain is a poet from the Midlands. She has shared writing on local and national stages and in pages. In 2023, El was longlisted for the Outspoken Prize for Poetry (2023), they are an alumni of Apples and Snakes’ Word’s A Stage 2.0 (2024), and a participant of Apples and Snakes’ Future Voices (2023), representing the South West.

Until she retreats into the woods, Elena can be found on Instagram @arspoeticel


Entry requirements: 14+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio

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Community Poem November 2024

Safeword

Harry and Kate went to masturbate,
loving the vibration of love,
a slow, slinky ooziness.
A sausage, a hole and Vinted.
Breathe in, said Kate, exhale the fire of living.
The bag was bulging.

We need to establish a safeword, said Harry
I’m thinking of a line, said Kate, but it’s not happening,
the only thing that comes to mind is a thousand fucking doves.
Harry suggested: I love Ian Beale…?
Chocolate coins? said Kate Time is a construct!
Dare you! Dare you! Double dare you?

The naughty little mouse nibbled my member, said Harry
Well, your compliment wasn’t good enough, said Kate,
asking to see my anus on Instagram is not a love poem.
An ode for a misplaced hip flask? said Harry.

I hate loving you, you love hating me, said Harry,
and the postage was paid in Northern Ireland.

Days are unequal in the struggles of the dead, said Kate
What is stopping ants from taking over the world? Democracy?

I hope this line is read out of context
like Leda, like Persephone, like women, women, women. 
On this pirate ship poetry pandemonium,
we’re all just twatting around in the glitter.

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