Simon Sweetman
Simon Sweetman is writer of poetry, stories, journalism, and newsletters. He’s old enough to remember when they were called blogs, and before that, more privately, diaries.
He hosts the monthly open mic “SAY THE THING” at Meow, open to writers of words across all genres and levels of experience. He is the author of two collections of poetry (“The Richard Poems” and “The Death of Music Journalism”) and one book of music journalism (”On Song”). You can sometimes hear him talking about music on RNZ, and he writes something every day on Substack (“Sounds Good!”).
Last year he completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML, and is currently working on two books of short stories.
Photo credit Mary McCallum
Verb Readers & Writers Festival 2026 events Simon Sweetman features in:
Fever! A Poetry Gala