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Events

Tag: Huddersfield event

Poetry Slam 2025

Ten fantastic poets compete to become our 2025 Slam Champ. Hosted by award-winning poet Rose Condo with a special performance by poet Chérie Taylor Battiste and guest spot from our 2024 Slam winner Christopher Bowles. Apply to participate or book tickets to spectate and cheer on the competitors. 

First Prize: £50, and a guest spot at our 2026 Poetry Slam.  

To apply: Send a video (max length 3 minutes, phone videos accepted) of you performing your work to [email protected] by Monday 14 April.  

Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: [email protected] with your request.  

Terms and Conditions 

  1. To apply please Send a video (max length three minutes) of you performing your work to [email protected] (it’s fine to use a phone to record your video).  See above for deadline.
  2. We will only view one application per person. Further applications will be ignored. 
  3. We regret that we cannot view any applications received after the deadline. 
  4. Successful artists should hear back from us by five working days after the deadline. 

 

SLAM RULES

  1. Poetry must be your own original work
  2. No singing or props. 
  3. There will be two rounds. The poets will draw numbers from a hat and perform in that order. In the second round the order will be reversed.
  4. Poets have 3 minutes to perform their poetry. The clock starts from the very first thing you say – including hello. 

Points will be deducted for over-running as follows:  

1-9 seconds minus 1 point
10-19 seconds minus 2 points
20-29 seconds minus 3 points
30 seconds minus 4 points, host will stop you, you’ll be judged on your incomplete poem.  

  1. The poets will be scored out of 10 in two categories. Written content and quality of performance. The highest total score over both rounds wins £50. In the event of a tie there will be a final sudden death round.
  2. Judges’ decisions are final. Please remember the slam motto: “The points are not the point, the poetry is the point.”

Date: Saturday 17 May 

Time: 7.30pm-10pm  

Location: Cellar, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen Street, Huddersfield HD1 2SP 

Tickets: £10 (£8 conc), free for essential carers accompanying a ticket holder 

Age guidance: 16+ 

Access Guide: https://www.accessable.co.uk/huddersfield-literature-festival/access-guides/the-cellar

Book tickets

Please note: When purchasing tickets please download the Eventbrite ‘app’ or ‘create an Eventbrite account’. This will facilitate quicker access to your tickets.

Stuart Maconie on The Beatles

THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT

Acclaimed author and broadcaster Stuart Maconie talks about his latest book: With a Little Help from their Friends. With a subtitle of The Beatles changed the world. But who changed theirs? – this is an engaging, surprising and revealing look at the Beatles story. 

Everyone knows a Beatles tune. But their story goes beyond the omnipresent songs and iconic albums. Theirs is a tale that has become one of the core stories we tell about ourselves as a nation. The Beatles narrative has both shaped and reflected the country we live in today. Four lads from Liverpool have taken a seat alongside Shakespeare as one of our key cultural exports to the world, a world they changed and re-made in their own image in a blaze of creativity. But these four distinct personalities changed the world not in isolation but with more than a little help from their friends. 

Like all the best stories there’s an incredible supporting cast, and all the most compelling elements of the great dramas: ambition, power, triumph, disaster, heartbreak, tragedy, drama, intrigue, lust… and of course, love. 

Split into 3 sections, Before The Beatles, With the Beatles and Beyond the Beatles, bestselling writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie tells the epic tale of the people who made the band who made Britain, and along the way adds his own experiences, encounters and conversations that show the Beatles like you’ve never seen them before. 

Stuart Maconie is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including: The Nanny State Made Me, Hope and Glory, Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North, The Full English: A Journey in Search of a Country and its People and a memoir Cider With Roadies. He is Britain’s best-selling non-TV-tie-in travel author and has written the official biographies of the bands Blur and James. Host of BBC6 Music’s Radcliffe and Maconie and The Freak Zone, he regularly deputises for other presenters on Radio 2 and 6 Music, as well as presenting long-running shows and documentaries for radio and TV. He writes for various papers and magazine and has a column in the Radio Times. 

Access and Covid safety measures: if you have specific access needs or queries and/or prefer to be seated away from other audience members as a Covid safety measure, please contact our Admin at: [email protected] with your request.  

Date: Saturday 17 May 

Time: 4pm-5pm 

Location: Cellar, Lawrence Batley Theatre, Queen Street, Huddersfield HD1 2SP 

Tickets: £12 (£10 conc), free for essential carers accompanying a ticket holder 

Early Bird tickets are now ended

For further information on concession and essential carer tickets please visit our FAQ’s page.

Age guidance: 14+ (U16s should be accompanied by an adult) 

Access Guide: https://www.accessable.co.uk/huddersfield-literature-festival/access-guides/the-cellar

THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT

Book tickets

Please note: When purchasing tickets please download the Eventbrite ‘app’ or ‘create an Eventbrite account’. This will facilitate quicker access to your tickets.