What Is Poet Not Dead: A Living Open Mic in Bali

Poet Not Dead is a monthly poetry and music open mic in Bali, bringing together those who can no longer stay silent. It is not a competition, not a curated festival with judges and rankings — it is a living space, open to every form of creative expression: poetry and song, prose and standup, dance and theatre and anything in between. The project rests on a philosophical premise: poetry does not die as long as someone is willing to speak it aloud.

Why "Poet Not Dead" Is a Declaration, Not Just a Name

The name is a manifesto. In an era of algorithmic content, optimised captions, and words produced at industrial scale, the act of standing before a live audience to say something true feels almost subversive. That is precisely the point. Poet Not Dead exists as a counterweight — a deliberate act of depth and presence in a world that rewards noise and speed.

The project was born from a simple, persistent observation: many people carry poems, songs, stories, and performances inside them for years — sometimes for decades — waiting for a moment that never arrives. Life intervenes. Courage falters. The right stage never materialises. Poet Not Dead creates that stage, once a month, reliably, on the island of Bali.

The underlying philosophy reaches further than events. It insists that every human being is a poet in the deepest sense — not as a profession, but as a capacity. The capacity to transform pain into beauty, chaos into meaning, silence into language. This capacity cannot be killed. It can only be suppressed. And what is suppressed can be returned to life. That return is what happens, month after month, at Poet Not Dead.

How the Open Mic Works: No Barriers, No Restrictions

The Poet Not Dead open mic is an evening without a script and without hierarchy. The stage is open to any form of creative expression — genuinely any:

• Poetry and verse — original or borrowed, in any language
• Music and song — acoustic, vocal, live instrumentation
• Prose and short stories — novel fragments, essays, personal confessions
• Standup and monologue — humour, the absurd, the deeply intimate
• Dance, theatre, and performance — the body as language, space as text

There are no restrictions on creative expression from the stage. No auditions. No requirements around experience or skill level. Entry to all events is free.

The only thing required is to show up. To take the stage or remain in the audience and listen. Both choices carry equal weight. Events take place once a month in carefully chosen spaces across Bali — intimate cafés, art spaces, open-air terraces where the sky becomes part of the room. Dates and locations are always announced on poetnotdead.com and in the Telegram channel @poetnotdead.

Who Comes to Poet Not Dead

Poet Not Dead draws no distinction between "real poets" and everyone else. The evenings bring together a genuinely varied group of people, and this variety is not incidental — it is the design.

Russian-speaking expats who have made Bali their home for months or years find in the open mic a way to speak in their native tongue and stay connected to a version of themselves that predates relocation. Travellers passing through the island for a few weeks discover, sometimes to their own surprise, that they have something to say — and that this is the right place to say it. Professional musicians and writers who need a live audience rather than metrics. And those who have never held a microphone but feel, finally and quietly, that the time has come.

It is this mixture that generates the particular energy of a Poet Not Dead evening. When a seasoned author and someone reading their first poem share the same stage, something shifts in the room. Fear diminishes. Community appears. Something emerges that cannot be manufactured intentionally — only allowed to happen.

Poetry as a Practice of Remaining Alive

Words have been cheapened. Billions of them are produced daily — in posts, threads, push notifications, automated messages — and most carry no real weight. Poet Not Dead is a sustained attempt to restore weight to the word. Deliberately. With effort. Once a month.

The therapeutic value of creative expression is well-documented. When a person transforms an experience into an image, a rhythm, a metaphor — they gain a form of authority over that experience. Poetry is not decoration. It is a technology for processing what cannot be processed otherwise. And the open mic is not merely a performance — it is a public act of healing, witnessed and held by others in the room.

In Bali, where many people find themselves in profound states of transition — between lives, between countries, between versions of themselves — this resonates with particular force. Poet Not Dead offers a space where being unfinished is not a liability. Where incompleteness is welcome on stage. Where incompleteness is, perhaps, the most honest statement of all.

How to Join the Community

Joining Poet Not Dead requires far less than you might imagine. Not a polished hour of material — just one poem, one song, one story fragment, one movement. Or simply the willingness to come and listen on a first visit. That too is full participation.

Follow upcoming events at poetnotdead.com and on Telegram at @poetnotdead, where monthly dates, venue addresses, and event themes are published in advance. Occasionally, special formats appear — themed evenings built around a single idea, collaborations between poets and musicians, guest performances from visiting artists.

Poet Not Dead is not merely a monthly event. It is a reminder that the poet inside you has not died. They have simply been waiting for the right moment. Perhaps that moment is now.