Join us for the Brooklyn Poets Friday Night Open, which begins with an open mic and culminates in readings by two featured poets. Our featured poets on February 23rd will be Ann Herendeen & Amatan Noor.

6:00 PM: open mic signup begins

6:30 to 7:45 PM: open mic

8 to 8:30 PM: featured readers

Each reader for the open mic can read for up to a four-minute set. Participants can purchase one of eight tickets in advance to reserve an open mic spot. Once those tickets sell out, all other participants who’d like to read for the open mic can purchase a ticket to sign up at the door on a first-come, first-serve basis. There will be time for about 16–18 readers.

Guests can purchase tickets to attend in person at 144 Montague Street or virtually via Zoom (note: virtual guests cannot read for the open mic). For in-person attendance, advance online ticket sales end at 5 PM on the day of the event. After that, tickets for in-person attendance can be purchased at the door until we reach capacity. Tickets for virtual attendance will be available until 6:30 PM. A Zoom link will be emailed to all ticket holders. Participants are encouraged to purchase tickets in advance for in-person attendance, as there are limited seats. Brooklyn Poets members take $5 off.

Note that by participating in the Friday Night Open, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. Effective January 8, 2024, all events attendees except readers at a safe distance on stage are required to wear masks due to the current rise in cases in NYC. Our full policy can be found at the end of the event description. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

Closed captions will be available for the event through the Zoom livestream. For more information and to request additional accommodations, contact us at bkp@brooklynpoets.org.

About the Authors:

Ann Herendeen is a native New Yorker and Brooklyn resident who majored in English at Princeton University in the 1970s and is still recovering from culture shock. Due to hand disabilities, she was not an active writer until her forties, when computers transformed the writing process from a chore to a pleasure. Since discovering poetry through a new friendship, Ann has found a supportive community and is drawing on her poetry studies as she completes a work of autofiction set in a dystopian future. She won Poem of the Month honors at the Brooklyn Poets Yawp in January 2023, and in December of that year received the Brooklyn Poets Robin Romeo Award, given to an outstanding poet who supports others in the community.

Amatan Noor is a Bangladeshi poet living in Brooklyn, NY. She migrated to the United States in 2005 and spent her adolescence in New Jersey. Amatan’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry appears in Dialogist, Thimble, Midway and No, Dear, among other journals. Amatan has won poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café and Brooklyn Poetry Slam. She is the author of the chapbook Not Guilty (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Amatan lives in Clinton Hill and is in an ongoing love affair with Fort Greene Park.