Performance venues

London's stages and concert rooms: the West End houses and the playhouses that make their own shows, the grand halls, the churches with a musical life, the jazz basements, the comedy clubs, the clubs proper, the rooms above pubs where things start, and the booth on Leicester Square that sells off what the West End has not. What is on is listed under each venue, and in What's On.

What is on at them this week is in What's On: Performance

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The Poetry Café

The Poetry Society's own room, with a basement that has launched a great many first collections.

Fringe & pubs

The Poetry Society has been going since 1909 and this is its house: a small front room on Betterton Street with a performance basement under it. What happens down there is readings, launches, workshops and reading groups, and the long-running fixture was Poetry Unplugged, an open microphone the Society describes as a place where someone who has never read a poem in public can do it for the first time and an experienced poet can try something out.

It is not reliably open as a café. Since the pandemic the Society has run the space mainly for booked events and hire during office hours, bringing live evenings back gradually rather than all at once, so check what is on before making the trip rather than arriving expecting a counter.

Where
22 Betterton Street, WC2H 9BX
Nearest station
Covent Garden · 3 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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