One of the things I've enjoyed most about being in Reykjavík this past six months has been getting involved with the writing community. There's a truly vibrant community of authors here, both locally born and recently migrated. It's open, inclusive, and truly welcoming to newcomers – both in terms of those who have recently arrived in Iceland and those who have recently begun writing. Since it can be hard meeting people in Iceland, a community like this is really important to connecting with other writers and an audience.
I went to my first Reykjavík Poetics event in February 2024. By July, I'm helping to produce the shows. Granted, this is because I have the time and flexibility to volunteer to help run these events, and community-run events always need volunteers. But it's been easy to get involved when everyone has been so great.
It was an excellent pleasure to work on the Reykjavik Poetics website. The site lists each of the events over the last years and, for most events, has photos as well. Over time, we hope to include audio for many of the pieces - at least, where we have a recording and where the speaker is happy for us to share it. Since many of the Reykjavik Poetics events are open mics many of the pieces that are read out are unfinished. Beautiful and worthy of reading to an audience, but not yet at the stage where the writer is ready for it to be made public. Still, to have an archive of work built up over a year's worth of events is quite exciting, and all freely available online.
The most recent Reykjavík Open event was last night, 10 July 2024 at Mengi. It was also my first attempt at doing photography for these events. You can see photos here and below.