A new open-mic poetry event is being launched in Northumberland at the end of September. Coal Town Poetry will take place at Woodhorn mining museum, pictured, near Ashington, on Saturday afternoon, 26 September. 

It is hoped that this will become a quarterly event, and follows a previous poetry event at the museum earlier this year that revealed an enthusiasm for poems about Northumberland’s mining heritage. 

The organiser is Greg Freeman, who moved to the north-east from Surrey four years ago. He said: “Since relocating to this wonderful land, I have become fascinated by all things Northumbrian - and that, of course, includes the region’s coal-mining past. 

“At our coal-mining poetry event back in March, there seemed to be a real pent-up demand to pay tribute to a way of life that has gone, for good and ill, and to express this area’s past and identity in poetry.” 

Both Ashington and nearby Blyth are regarded as having areas of deprivation after the end of coal. But both towns are looking to the future. Ashington has had its passenger railway link to Newcastle restored after 60 years, with hopes that it might extend to the coast. Blyth has become a centre of wind-power technology, after the demise of coal and shipbuilding. 

Although the main seam will be mining, Greg added: “This is an open-mic event, so we’re open to anything! But we’re very interested in poems about the days of coal - hence the name of the event - and the area’s post-industrial present and future as well.”

Doors open at 1pm for a 1.30pm start at the museum’s Learning Room, just inside the main entrance. Admission is via a year’s museum pass, purchased at the main gate. More details