Critically acclaimed poet and musician Colin Hassard represented Northern Ireland at the 15th edition of the Transpoesie Poetry Festival, which took place in Antwerp and Brussels between 18-19 September 2025. Colin was selected by the Arts Council NI to represent the talent of our region and bring the vibrancy of Northern Ireland poetry to Belgium in a wide range of cultural events.
TRANSPOESIE is an annual poetry festival run by the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) based in Brussels. This years theme was “Turbulent Times”, offering the poets a chance to voice their hopes and fears for the current generation.
Colin, originally from Banbridge, was runner-up in the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing in 2018 and shortlisted for the Aurivo North West Words Poetry Competition in 2019. As a spoken word poet, Colin has twice been Ulster Poetry Slam Champion, was joint winner of the Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Award in 2020 as well as a former winner of poetry slams at the Belfast Book Festival and Belly Laughs Comedy Festival. Colin has performed his work on Sky One and has written commissioned poems for BBC television and national advertisements. He was Writer-in-Residence for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival 2015, Poet-in-Residence for all three series of BBC Radio Ulster show Science & Stuff and has an ongoing creative residency with the Duncairn Centre for Culture and Arts, Belfast.
Colin performed a number of poems from his debut collection “age of the microwave dinner” at the Flemish Literary Archive Letterenhuis in Antwerp, and his poem “foreign” from the same collection at the historic Halles de Schaerbeek as part of Poetik Bazar in Brussels. Colin was joined alongside a diverse range of poets from the Channel Islands, the Basque region, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, among others.
To keep up to date with our events in Brussels, make sure to follow @BrusselsNI on X (Twitter) and @Brussels_NI on Instagram. To keep up to date with Colin’s work, follow him on Instagram, X (Twitter) or Facebook @colinhassard, and his personal website www.collinhassard.com.