Writing is one of the easiest ways of expressing yourself.  

At first glance our aim is to realize poetry night, but when you take a better look you can see that our aim is to create a community for poets and poetry lovers in Maastricht, giving everyone who wants and longs a podium to perform their work for an audience. 

 

We believe that literature is one of the most low threshold and approachable forms of art. Literature educates, entertains, gives comfort, connects, and can take many different shapes. Literature is a natural form of expression, many people start to write from a personal feeling and/or urge, writing ist for a lot of people part of their job or they just simply write as a means to communicate with friends and family. Writing is so normal in our society that many people take literature as a starting point for their self expression. Because of this, it is important to us to organise low threshold poetry nights in Maastricht.

 

The low threshold approach is very important to us since we want to make poetry nights as accessible as possible. We want to give everyone the chance to experience poetry and make new connections with like minded people. We want to offer everyone the chance, with no regards towards their background, income, ideology, restrictions or any other criterium, to be part of a literature community and a stage to perform. 

 

Therefore the aim of Puss’Poetry is to create a literature community in Maastricht, to stimulate and exchange knowledge on writing and art, and to offer writers a stage to perform their work. 

 

To combine our passionate desire to awaken the poetry community in Maastricht whilst showcasing our selected talent, Puss'Poetry always has a curated lineup followed by a participatory element. The night starts with some music from a local musician, followed by four programmed international poets and the open stage. The invited poets are mostly a mixture of experienced poets and poets who have never been on a stage before. Through this approach, young writers can connect with more experienced writers. 

 

This mixture results in a safespace which inspires the audience to go on to the stage themselves. By seeing a programmed poet who is performing for the first time, the audience sees that it’s totally fine to be nervous, it encourages them to see someone in a similar situation who was invited for the line up. By inviting more experienced poets we take the night to the next level. More experienced poets can tend to be a bit more experimental while functioning as an inspiring example for the audience. 

All the poets are introduced by us, we moderate the night and make sure that there is an atmosphere of safety and trust. 

Even Though the main language is English, every language is welcome, especially on the open stage. The openstage also functions for us as a means to scout poets for upcoming editions.