Beehive Poets

Beehive Poets was founded around the turn of the millennium and met at the New Beehive pub, Westgate, on most Mondays until the pandemic. It hosted some of the country’s leading poets, including Vernon Scannell, Daljit Nagra, Ian MacMillan, Helen Mort and Kim Moore, and nurtured Poems on the Underground initiator Gerard Benson, among many others. Since the closure of the New Beehive, two groups have taken up the mantle. One meets in Bradford’s Josef K Café on the third Monday of the month and hosts readers including Bill Broady and Martyn Crucefix, while the other has moved to Shipley’s Beehive pub and focusses on read-arounds, meeting on every second, fourth and fifth Thursday.