Photo: The Scribe
The Scribe, known as the ‘student-run University of Leeds Arts magazine’, publishes a huge range of student’s creative work; they’re always looking for your poetry, short fiction, artwork, photography, and features. Glancing through their older issues shows that poetry is the most popular, and this was also the case at their open-mic, with around half the performers reading their own poetry.
The welcoming atmosphere and the large crowd made it a more relaxed experience than a night of undergraduate poetry with candles in jam-jars might sound, and the range of experience amongst the performers was huge, from impressive first timers reading from their phones to practised spoken word performers. While this open stage gave the night a comfortable, friendly feel, it did also lead to it becoming rather long, lasting around three hours, as more and more people volunteered to perform.
However, there were also a range of other performers, from music to stand-up comedy. Some of the music was very good, and thankfully there wasn’t anybody with an out of tune guitar and an albums worth of Mumford and Sons covers. The comedians, unfortunately, didn’t find the right crowd – the poetry-and-fairy-lights atmosphere wasn’t really lending itself to raucous laughter. It was refreshing, though, to see a wider set of styles than can be found at many open-mic nights.
The deadline for submissions for the next Scribe issue is the 19th of October. They hope to be running creative writing workshops and other events later this semester, and should be running another open-mic in November. If it’s as friendly and open as this one, then it’ll be well worth going to.
Robert Cohen