Chimes: Poetry Open Mic

For one night only, Bath’s long-running open mic poetry night Chimes swaps its usual home at The Bell for the intimate underground stage at The Jesters Comedy Club. Whether you're a seasoned wordsmith or a first-time poet, sign-ups are open on the door – come share your voice or just sit back and soak up the magic.

This special edition will be headlined by award-nominated poet Tom Sastry, known for his wry, tender and politically-charged verse (A Man's House Catches Fire, You Have No Normal Country to Return To).

'Tom Sastry is political, ironic, emotional, morbid and funny in all the wrong places. His new collection Life Expectancy Begins To Fall is book about people whose retirement plan is dying in the climate wars and whose current plan is pretending everything is fine. It was described by Costa Award winning poet Jonathan Edwards as “the most important – and certainly the most entertaining – book about the end of the world I’ve yet found”

Tom’s previous books have been (variously) Poetry School Book of the Year, Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice, highly commended in the Forward Prize and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize.

“A magician of deadpan” – Hera Lindsay Bird  

“incisive, witty, surreal, truthful” – Amy Acre

"Tom Sastry navigates the mysterious everyday...making friendships and love affairs new and strange"  - Carol Ann Duffy'