Word Central at Central Library

Long-standing live literature favourite Word Central is having a bash with its ‘Now We Are Nine’ birthday celebration.

Taking place every month at Central Library – just crowned National Library of the Year at the 2025 British Book Awards – Word Central features open mic performers and a special guest, brought to you by Manchester Libraries and Flapjack Press. Recent Word Central headliner duties have been taken by Forward Prize-winning poet Kim Moore and spoken word stalwart Mike Garry (pictured).

Join some of the award-winning wordsmiths of Salford-based publishing house Flapjack Press and performers from further afield for the latest instalment in what you can expect to be a no-holds-barred evening of performance poetry, all compered by the affable Tony Curry.

To mark nine years on the spoken word circuit, Word Central has invited along Angela Smith as special guest. Welsh by birth but having lived in Hulme long enough to be Mancunian by adoption, Angela Smith’s poetry is influenced by both the Valleys and the city. Having started writing at the age of seven, she stopped for decades when a burglar stole her notebooks and her muse, but friends and the welcoming Manchester poetry scene inspired her to take up writing again. Loving to play with form and style, she has since had poems published in numerous anthologies and her collection This Is the Me I Would Be If I Dared. A

Doors open at 5.40pm. There’s a sign-up-in-advance open mic for Word Central, but if you fancy taking part, you need to be quick – the three-minute performance slots are bookable from noon two weeks before (this month, the list opens on 15 July) via email to the Flapjack address and are allocated on a ‘first come first served’ basis (if none are left you will be offered a space on the reserve list).