How to Attend Friendly Street Poets' City Meeting & Open Mic

Friendly Street Poets posts its City Meeting & Open Mic notices on its own site, so the reliable way to attend is to check the current notice for the date, venue and start time, then turn up ready to listen or to put your name down for the open mic. The collective has run since 1975 and is based in Adelaide, and its meetings are listed alongside its other news, such as the September City Meeting & Open Mic entry that appears on the site. Because the site publishes each meeting as a separate post rather than a single permanent calendar, treat the latest notice as the source of truth before you travel.

Where the meeting details are published

The site's news feed carries meeting announcements mixed in with poems, prize results and book launches. Recent items on the page include:

• Poems of the Month – August 2026 – Jude Aquilina & phil saunders
• New Poets 27 and Single Poet 2026 winners
• Launch of FSP Anthology 50 Quintessence
• FSP September City Meeting & Open Mic
• Poems of the Month – July 2026 – Maeve Archibald & Mike Riddle

The "FSP September City Meeting & Open Mic" post sits under categories that include FSP City Meetings, so scanning that category is the quickest way to find the next date rather than reading every post.

What happens at a City Meeting & Open Mic

The format combines a business/collective meeting with an open mic segment. From the site's own coverage of the wider FSP calendar, the pattern is:

The open mic is the part aimed at poets who want to share work in person, and at listeners who want to hear current Adelaide poetry. The Poems of the Month feature shows the kind of work the collective circulates: August 2026 selections were "You can't keep a good witch down" by Jude Aquilina and "Fresh Blood – Ode to Young'uns" by phil saunders, chosen by anthology editors Elizabeth Salna and Erica Jolly, with commended poems by Darrell Coggins, Dawn Colsey, Ros Schulz and Michelle Slatter.

Steps to attend

1. Open friendlystreetpoets.org.au and find the most recent post with "City Meeting" in the title.
2. Read the post for the date, venue and time. If the post is truncated ("Click for more"), open the full entry.
3. Decide whether you are attending to listen or to read. If you want to read, arrive early enough to ask about signing up for the open mic.
4. Check the post again close to the date in case details changed, since each meeting is announced as its own item.

Expected result: you have a confirmed date and venue from the collective's own notice, and you know whether you are there as an audience member or a reader.

Common snags

• No standing calendar. Meetings appear as individual posts, so an old post may still surface in search results. Always match the month in the title to the current month.
• Mixed feed. Prize announcements, anthology launches and poem selections are interleaved with meeting notices. Use the FSP City Meetings category to filter.
• Venue varies. FSP activity is spread across Adelaide locations — the Box Factory, the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Thebarton and the Effective Living Centre all appear in recent posts for other events. Do not assume the meeting is at the same place as a launch or prize announcement.
• Truncated posts. Some entries cut off before the practical details. Open the full post rather than relying on the excerpt.

If you want to go further than the open mic

The site also shows the pathways the collective runs for poets: the New Poets and Single Poet competitions (New Poets 27 judged by Rob de Kok, Single Poet 2026 judged by Steve Brock, with winners announced at the Box Factory), and the annual anthology, whose 50th edition Quintessence was edited by Val Braendler and Ben Adams and launched at the Effective Living Centre. The Satura Prize and Nova Prize are awarded to poems in each anthology, judged in 2026 by Shaine Melrose. Attending a City Meeting & Open Mic is the low-commitment entry point; the competitions and anthology are the longer route if you want your work published by FSP.