The Coast is Queer Open Mic 2025

Back for a second year – AFLO. the poet invites you to join us for an evening of punchy poetics that promise to queer the status quo of the spoken word landscape. Featuring local poets Erin James and Kae, plus Rick Dove, with a special guest appearance from our festival Writer in Residence, Sea Sharp, this open mic is the perfect way to kick The Coast is Queer 2025 off.

Doors at 8.00pm. Arrive early to register your interest in performing at the Open Mic.

AFLO. the poet is an award-winning Brighton-based spoken word artist, activist and academic who embraces creative expression to disrupt the status quo and inspire social change. From protests on the streets of Brighton, to celebrations in hills of Jamaica, AFLO. has shared her rhythmic rhymes far and wide and has no intentions of stopping. Her highlights from 2024 so far include continuing her residency at Brighton Dome, featuring in Verve Poetry Festival, and heading to the magical fields of Glastonbury to share her work and host the open mic on the Poetry & Words stage.

Sea Sharp is a Pushcart Prize-winning poet of “The Tallgrass Shuffles” and author of the Prairie Seed Poetry Prize-winning debut, The Swagger of Dorothy Gale & Other Filthy Ways to Strut (Ice Cube Press, 2017). Their second collection, Black Cotton (Waterloo Press, 2019), was released the same year they developed and toured their Arts Council England-funded theatrical show, Brother Insect. Sharp is also an Obsidian Foundation (2020) and Manhattan Experimental Theater Workshop (2004-2005) alumnus. Their writing has been described as “a visceral and sonic world of teeth and tornadoes” with “language that crackles.” Beyond the stage and page, they are often shy, claiming the right to remain invisible somewhere near Brighton, UK.

Kae is a Black, queer, Kenyan-American writer, artist, and athlete who uses her experiences with adoption, trauma, and disability to explore identity, belonging, and resilience through mixed media art and poetry. Born in Kenya and adopted by white Americans, she lives in a state of “perpetual migration” between Kenya and the U.S., navigating complex themes of home, Blackness, and queer identity. 

Rick Dove is a black, queer, and disabled writer and activist from South London. Widely anthologised since 2016, Rick has two solo collections with Burning Eye Books, Tales From the Other Box (2020), and Supervillain Origin Story (2023); he has toured nationally, including festival feature appearances at Shambala, Greenbelt, the Margate Bookie, and the Edinburgh Fringe; and he was crowned UK Poetry Slam Champion in 2021. With eclectic work exploring themes of social justice, identity, and revolution, Rick has a vision of a fairer world and wants to take you with him.

Erin James is a Brighton / London based multi-disciplinary artist, hoping to change the world “one poem at a time”. Their framework for creating manifests as the merging of art and activism through their practices. Erin is passionate about using their art forms, such as Poetry and Sound, Creative Facilitation, Acting and Photography as a vessel for social change and decolonial healing.