Touted as the “best poetry event in the borough” by Brooklyn Magazine and “one of the most innovative literary events in the city” by Time Out New York, the Brooklyn Poets Yawp is a monthly poetry workshop & open mic held on the second Monday of every month from 6:30 to 9 PM. The event is hosted at 144 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights and also livestreamed via Zoom (closed captions available).
6:00 PM: doors open & open mic sign-up begins
6:30 to 7:30 PM: generative writing workshop
7:45 to 9 PM: open mic
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). Advance online ticket sales for in-person attendance 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 the start of the workshop at 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 the event usually sells out. Brooklyn Poets members take $5 off.
Each reader for the open mic can read one poem of 3 minutes max. Participants can purchase one of ten 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. We usually have time for about 20–22 readers.
One poem at every open mic is declared Yawp Poem of the Month by audience vote. The winning writer earns a Brooklyn Poets tote bag, one of the twelve spots in our Yawp Poem of the Year contest and a ticket to our annual Awards Gala in December. We record and publish a monthly Yawpcast, so note that by reading you’re giving us permission to distribute your recording, unless you notify us otherwise. Also note that by participating in the Yawp, you agree to abide by our COVID-19 policy and code of conduct below. 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.
Workshop Leader & Featured Reader
Gbenga Adesina is a Nigerian poet and essayist. He received his MFA from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. His chapbook Painter of Water was published as part of the New-Generation African Poets series from Akashic Books, and his poem “Across the Sea: A Sequence” won the 2020 Narrative Prize. The winner of the 2022 Denise Bell Award from Brooklyn Poets, Adesina has received fellowships and support from Poets House, New York, the Fine Arts Work Center and the Norman Mailer Center, and he was the 2019–20 Olive B. O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, the Yale Review, the New York Times and elsewhere.