The stage and its circuit

The one word covers six different rooms with six different sets of rules: the workshop share, the school showcase, the open mic, the poetry slam, where poets perform their own work and judges pulled out of the audience score it, the recitation contest, where a student says a poem somebody else wrote from memory and is marked on accuracy as well as delivery, and the festival or team event that sits above all of them. Working out which room you have walked into settles almost everything else, including how long you get, whether you may read from paper, and whether anybody is keeping score.

What actually happens at a poetry reading

At a poetry reading the shape is close to identical whatever the venue, and it is worth knowing before you sit down. Doors open somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour before the poetry starts, because the room needs time to fill and, at an open mic, because the sign-up list is on a table by the door and it closes when it is full. A host opens the night, says the house rules, and reads the running order. Poems come in short blocks with the host speaking between them. Most nights carry one feature, a poet booked to do a longer set of 15 to 20 minutes, and put them either just before or just after a break. The night ends when the list ends, which is usually 2 hours after it started.

The audience is louder than at a book event and quieter than at a gig. People snap their fingers, hum, say a word back, and clap between poems rather than only at the end of a set. Nobody talks over a poem, and nobody films a young poet without asking first. If the night is free, the venue is making its money on drinks, and if there is a bucket by the door it is paying the feature. These are conventions rather than rules, but a room notices when they are ignored.

Six rooms, and what each one asks of you

The six rooms differ less in what a poem sounds like than in what is asked of the person saying it. Read down the last column first: the demand is the thing that decides whether you are ready for that room this month or next year.

The order of that table is the order most young writers travel it, and the first three steps are the ones that matter. The open mic is the ordinary door into all of this, and the only room on the list that asks nothing of you beyond signing up early, keeping to time and standing up when your name is called. Recitation contests run on a separate track through schools and ask for a poem from an anthology rather than one of your own. Everything above the open mic is a choice, not a ladder you are obliged to climb.

Spoken word, poetry reading and poetry slam: what separates them

Spoken word, a poetry reading and a poetry slam are three different kinds of thing, and the three words get used loosely enough that it is worth separating them once. A poetry reading is an event. Spoken word poetry is a kind of writing, poetry composed to be performed rather than read off a page, which can be said at a reading, a slam, an assembly or nowhere at all. A poetry slam is a format, a competition laid over an event, with judges and scores.

The practical differences show up in three places. At a reading, poets usually read from a book or a phone and nobody minds; at a slam, the work must be the poet's own, must be performed rather than read in most rooms, and props, costumes and music are banned. At a reading, length is a matter of courtesy; at a slam it is a rule with a penalty attached. And at a reading nobody scores anything, which is the whole reason many writers prefer one. Spoken word poetry as a practice sits underneath all of it: the images, the repetition and the turn at the end are the same craft whether or not five strangers are holding up numbers.

What to wear, and what to bring

Wear what you would wear to see a band in the same building, which at almost every poetry venue means ordinary clothes. There is no dress code at a reading, an open mic or a slam, and the poets on any one night range from a hoodie to a suit. Two things are worth a thought: shoes you can stand still in, because shifting weight reads as nerves, and a pocket or a bag for your phone.

Bring the poem on paper as well as on a phone, in a font big enough to read in low light. Bring water. Bring cash if the venue asks for a few pounds or dollars on the door, because a small room may have no card machine. If you are under 18, check the venue's age policy before you travel, because a licensed bar can be over 18 or over 21 whatever the night is, while libraries, bookshops, arts centres and youth clubs are usually open to everyone. That single check saves more wasted journeys than any other piece of advice on this page.

Is going to poetry readings good for you

Yes, for three things that are worth naming precisely, and the honest answer stops there. Going to readings teaches you what a poem sounds like at speaking speed, which is information you cannot get from the page and which changes how you write. It shows you the real range of what counts, from comic to political to very quiet, which is the fastest cure for the belief that there is one correct way to sound. And it puts you in a room with the people who run that room, which is how beginners get a first slot, an invitation to a workshop, or the name of the next night.

The wider claims made for poetry and young people, that it lifts confidence, attainment or reading comprehension, are evidenced more thinly than the leaflets suggest, and the classroom section of this reference weighs that evidence rather than repeating it. The benefits above are the ones any regular can watch happening; they are not a study and are not dressed up as one.

How to find a poetry reading, without a directory

To find a poetry reading near you, work through the six places that actually hold the information, because this reference keeps no venue database, no listings and no calendar, and it will never pretend to be a directory. Every night in every city is run by somebody local, changes venue, moves date and stops without notice, and a national list of them is out of date the week it is published.

• Ask at the public library events desk, which usually knows every literary event in the borough and often hosts one.
• Ask in an independent bookshop, an arts centre or a youth theatre, where the flyers for the poetry nights physically are.
• Check the creative writing society at any nearby university or college, because student nights are frequently open to the public and free.
• Search the venue's own listings rather than a national aggregator, once you know the venue's name.
• Follow the host, not the venue, on social media, because the host takes the night with them when the venue closes.
• Ask at the end of the first night you attend, which is the single most reliable method there is: the people packing up chairs know every other room in the city.

Scale changes what you will find, not how you find it. A city with a long standing scene, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Denver or Dallas, will have several poetry events a week and at least one weekly open mic that has run for years, and Chicago is where the slam began in the mid nineteen eighties. A small town may have one night a month in the back room of a cafe. Both are found by asking a librarian, and neither is found by searching this site.

If nothing exists within reach, the last option is to start one, which is less unlikely than it sounds: a room, a host, a list and 12 chairs is the entire apparatus, and running one is a job a sixth former or a librarian can do in a lunch hour. That is also the honest answer for a 15 year old in a place with no scene at all. Spoken word poetry has never depended on there being a venue; it has depended on somebody deciding that Thursday lunchtime in the library counts.