King Ink

In November 2025, we were delighted to welcome back a long-time regular of King Ink, Steve May . With his son, Sam, providing music and visuals, Steve’s set was a joyful and moving tribute to his wife, Pauline. King Ink...

In October 2025, a gleeful Bob Beagrie brought the spook factor. Reading from his latest collection, The Hand of Glory, we have never seen Bob so absolutely in his element, like an ebullient goat at some kind of goat...

In September 2025, we were joined by the Cactus Daddy himself, J Archer Avery . Joey has been a regular at King Ink for some time, and his performances are always memorable. On this occasion he was launching a...

In August 2025, the wonderful Amy Langdown came to town. Amy is the host of Newcastle’s Out Of Your Head spoken word night, and their poetry is informed by their queer, disabled and neurodivergent activism. And the way...

In July 2025, we were joined by the glorious Kirsten Luckins . She read from her (then) new collection, Offworld , a beautiful ekphrastic experiment in sci-fi storytelling published by local press, The Braag. From our...

In June 2025, we travelled to the second of two collaborative events with Born Lippy . Three brave poets, and a bunch of our regulars, took the Metro to the other place. And what a night we all had! From Born Lippy...

All right? From September last year into January of this year, you might have spotted James hanging out at Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen. As part of a Cultural Spring Nibbles commission, he spent several months...

All right? In June 2025, we celebrated Pride month in glorious style. This episode includes poems from the four feature sets that night, including On Being a Thing and Northern Lights by Scotters, Me, They, Them and My...

In May 2025, the wonderful Rue Collinge shared some poems from her collection, How to Train Your Dragon (published by Verve Poetry Press). Our open mic was as superb as ever. This episode features I Didn’t Know by Bobby...

<p>In April 2025, we hosted the first of two collaborative events with Born Lippy. Three poets from each night went head to head, and the winners...? Poetry!</p> <p>From Born Lippy, we had Hold Thoughts by Lydia Bruce...

<p>In March 2025, we hosted a launch event for Robin Moss. Robin’s latest pamphlet, Learning to Count on the Fingers of Two Hands is available from Mudfog Press. </p> <p>Our open mic turned out in force, and we have...

<p>In February 2025, we were joined by children's author and dead canny poet, Lisette Auton. We’d met Lisette at one of Steve Urwin's infamous Writing Marathons, and she’s one of those poets who just straight-up first...

<p>Throughout the summer of 2024, Helen was Poet in Residence at Sunniside in Sunderland. And in January, she launched a pamphlet of the poetry she wrote during that residency. Woohoo!</p> <p>From the night’s buzzing...

<p>We weren’t able to record an episode in December, due to James being laid low with lurgy. Sad times.</p> <p>But... James never throws any audio away, so we have a couple of festive poems to tickle your baubles...

<p>In November we lost one of our longest-standing community members, when Pauline May passed away. We all miss Pauline a great deal, and at the top of this episode, we wanted to commemorate her by sharing one of the...