The Yakima Coffeehouse Poets presents Open Mic Night on the second Wednesday of each month, September through May, usually held at the Larson Gallery, YVC Campus, 1606 W. Nob Hill Blvd (across the street from the old Larson Gallery).
Our Open Mic meetings begin at 7:00pm (unless otherwise noted) with doors open 30 minutes before as a reception.
Next Open Mic:
Wednesday, November 12, 2025,
7:00pm
at the Larson Gallery
(Doors open at 6:30pm for a Reception prior to the Reading.)
Featured Poet: Derek Sheffield
Derek Sheffield is the eighth poet laureate of Washington State (2025-2027). He is the author of Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Simmons Buntin and Elizabeth Dodd, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and, with Elizabeth Bradfield and CMarie Fuhrman, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His awards include the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee.
Derek lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org.
If you wish to read, please sign up via email:
Like the Poetry contest, Open Mic Night got its start at Allied Arts. The event was initiated in 2005 by local poet Elaine Smith. Then encouraged by the former Allied Arts director Elizabeth Herres Miller and her successor Jessica Moskwa. They felt a monthly forum where local poets could read original work would complement the annual contest. They were right.
Poets Claire Carpenter, Dotty Armstrong, Chuck Forster, Rod Nelson, Linda Brown, Ed Stover, Elaine Smith, and Mark Fuzie have kept Open Mic alive.
Open Mic Night was popular at the outset and remains so as a program now run by the Yakima Coffeehouse Poets. Come read a poem and meet your fellow Yakima poets.