Accessible? To Whom?

Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, essayist, and poetry curator, with over 300 published pieces and three books including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry open mic series (inception 2012). The monthly series bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo, along with Cy Strom, is the co-editor of the anthology: Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution. Bänoo is the recipient of the 2025 Freedom to Read Award by the Writers’ Union of Canada.

COVID-19 years were years of discovery—of new ways of connection. Many poetry events moved online. This possibility was exciting. There was an argument that online events are more accessible; that they bring together people from around the world; that anyone with an Internet connection can access them. Some argued that all poetry events should move online or have an online component. But my experience as an organizer, an attendee, and an observer of poetry events tells me that while online events create shows, they fail to create community.

Now, I am not advocating for online poetry events to stop. I have participated in and organized some myself. I just can’t help observing that the screen is not the primary site of poetic interaction.

First, I have to say that as an organizer of poetry open mics, I want to create community. A community is not composed of people who never show up. There is almost no other reward for creating community but the community itself. I do not organize events for celebrity writers who never attend events that exist to support grassroots movements and who almost exclusively attend events where they are the main speakers.

During COVID-19 years, while some poetry events organizers tried to recreate the pre-pandemic community online, nowhere was it as vibrant as it was before. In some cases, after an initial surge in numbers, organizers faced significantly lower attendance. Some organizers eventually stopped. Others continued, but with little energy. As soon as the pandemic ended, in-person events saw growing numbers pack mostly “inaccessible” venues. Among the people who showed up were seniors with mobility issues and disabled people, many of whom never joined online events. These people did not find online events more accessible.

It is a misconception that online events are more accessible. One could almost say that what makes poetry events accessible is not the venue, but the love of poetry. No one who does not care about poetry or community would ever attend open mic events even if they are held in the most accessible of places. As in the case of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), our faithful audience dwindled to a degree that the events ceased to be rewarding for me. Remember that poetry events should first and foremost energize and inspire the organizers, as they do not offer any tangible compensation.

Here are a few scenarios based on my observations of Shab-e She’r and other events:

Online poetry open mics are not accessible for people living in abusive relationships. The last thing you want to do is to share poetry about the abuse at the hands of your intimate partner or family member in the same space you share with them. You don’t want to voice critique against oppression at the hands of members of your community in your home, as you know some family members reinforce the oppressive community expectations in their own interactions with you. Your home is far from safe. You want to get away in order to feel free to raise your voice. And when you attend events away from home, you may even ask event organizers not to photograph you. You don’t want to leave any traces of your activities.

Online poetry events are not accessible to poets who challenge dictators and corrupt regimes across the world. In the Western multicultural world, this applies mostly to writers with roots in non-Western countries, including but not limited to China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. (Writing Prompt: Make a complete list of countries where it is dangerous to write against those in power.) In many parts of the world, writers and journalists risk their lives to raise awareness and initiate change. Those who write against secular and religious dictators are targeted by trolls and security agents working for some of the most oppressive regimes in the world. These writers find in-person events more accessible and less dangerous than online ones. For them, there is no complete safety, though. Remember Zahra Kazemi, Jamal Khashoggi, and Salman Rushdie. The list is bottomless.

Another group who find online events unsafe are those who share deeply personal poems during open mics. The issue may be the invasive nature of online video platforms that open vulnerable people to abuse. In an in-person event, organizers can set rules about respecting others’ boundaries and can more easily enforce them. The presence of a community witnessing people’s interactions and potentially able to intervene is a safety measure that is lost online.

Online poetry events are not accessible for people who do not engage in online banking. It seems to me that the majority of poetry open mic attendees fall into this category. The same people who happily pay at the door refuse to pay online for the show.

It goes without saying that online events are not accessible to homeless people, pan-handlers, or many of those who use food banks. At Shab-e She’r, we used to have them at our in-person events. Some of them performed at our open mics.

Online poetry open mic events are not fully accessible to newcomers, refugees, and immigrants. Those who are not native speakers of English have more difficulty comprehending what is going on in an online event. In an in-person event, messages can be more easily understood in context by observing not only the speaker, but people around the speaker, their gestures and facial expressions, as well as the way other audience members react. These non-verbal cues stop functioning in an online event.

Online poetic performance is not even fully accessible to poetry lovers. Poetry is not about your face on a screen. Poetry in performance is about the full body on the stage. The tremor in the poet’s hands, their voice shaking, their mismatched socks. Poetry is in the poet’s inability to read their own words and another poet stepping forward to quietly whisper the words on the page so that the poet can repeat them aloud. Poetry is about a blind poet being helped on the stage and the impact of their words on the audience. Poetry is about a young mother with her baby under her arm sharing a poem on the open mic. Poetry happens when the poets get off the stage and interact with the audience during the break. It happens when poets with different political perspectives share opposing views on stage and engage each other with compassion off the stage.

No event is fully accessible. Prioritizing any group means not prioritizing others. Some groups, including the ones mentioned above, have never been considered in our discussions about accessibility. We have not considered political, financial, personal, cultural, linguistic, and technical aspects of accessibility. Amid all these discussions and pressures, if organizers create poetry events most poetry lovers refuse to attend, they need to think again.

If you are an open mic frequenter, you are looking for human connection.

During the pandemic, most poetry audiences stayed away from online platforms because what makes poetry accessible is not the ease with which you can join an event from the “comfort” of your home. Poetry cannot be captured in videos. It is that elusive sense of togetherness in our individuality, that sense of belonging to and standing apart from others. The energy in the room. The poet’s heartbeat. Their breath and sweat. The way they go up on the stage or come down. The way they are transformed by their recitation. The way the unspoken is expressed through communal experience. The magic. The miracle. And now that in-person events are coming back, we see poets of all ages and abilities packing the venues to listen to and share poetry that is missed online.

Poetry has proved to be less accessible online, less accessible to most of its devoted audience. It lost more audiences than it gained when it shifted online. Poetry events should be accessible to poetry audiences themselves. It would be an error to call online poetry events accessible. Poetry dies in the distance. Get closer. Let poetry wrench your heart and lift you off the screen, the page, and the stage.