Describing itself as the ‘world's largest non-juried poetry festival’ and running from April 7-10, this open-mic-focused festival has a fantastic array of events and happenings.

There are readings, workshops and open-mic and round-table opportunities throughout the week, including Night of Poetry – an all-nighter during which an instant anthology is published by Thom Moon Bird, aka Thom the world poet who appeared at Write Out Loud’s heat of the Hammer and Tongue Four Continents slam event in Bolton in 2006: http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=257.

Thom also runs the Café Caffeine open mics at the festival, which will be attended by Write Out Loud member Trevor Wainwright from West Yorkshire, who is on a US open mic tour taking in Austin and Forest Festivals, Texas, Memphis, Knoxville, Delaware and New York. You never know, we might get blogs from him en route.

Austin International Poetry Festival, 2011, April 7-10,  http://www.aipf.org