I was invited to a Sunday afternoon poetry reading under the gazebo at the Hahn Horticulture Garden in Blacksburg. By way of introduction and because I saw several familiar faces in the audience from my days working at my friend’s Blacksburg bead shop throughout the ‘90s, I began my reading with a poem that I once taped […]
It was the second time that Chelsea Adams and I read our poems together in the past couple of months. We were invited to the Blacksburg Public Library on Sunday to read from our chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press. The crowd was light but attentive. There was an ease of sharing. The laughter and […]
We put on a good show. Maybe we should take it on the road, or at least do a couple of more local readings. Chelsea Adams and I were featured poets on Sunday at the New River Community College in Dublin, a presentation of the NRCC Library. In was a coffee house setting. After our […]
Mara shares a birthday with Pete Seeger, which made celebrating her birthday with poets and folk singers at Lucie Monroe’s Open Mic a good alignment. My birthday is in May too and coming up soon. I share mine with the Ayatollah Khomeini and Enya. I don’t know what’s going on here but I like to imagine […]
First there was the new Artemis poetry reading launch, hosted by two Floyd editors and featuring the legendary Nikki Giovanni (which I wrote about HERE), and then, a week later, Floyd County Moonshine contributors read at the Floyd library. Between these two fine literary/art publications and the two reading events, along with the fact that […]
The tables were set-up like a panel discussion and the stage lighting gave the feel of a police line-up. On the other hand, it was a pleasure not to hear coffee being ground for lattes and to not be distracted by a band playing nearby. So there I was in the hot seat after not […]
We were there for poetry not for filling cavities, or even for getting tattoos. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived at the Floyd Tattoo parlor, where the third Saturday Spoken Word is now held, was that Mara’s shirt matched the art hanging on the walls, so I made her pose. When […]
Since I was in a tattoo parlor and it was St. Patrick’s Day, I couldn’t resist confessing my imaginary shamrock tattoo when it was my turn to read. I was number 6 on a sign up sheet of 16 at the new Spoken Word Open Mic venue, the Floyd Tattoo & Arts Gallery in the […]
In the beginning I misunderstood. But now I’ve got it, the word is good. ~ Lennon/McCartney Should I retire the Spoken Word category of my blog? After a five year run of hearing from authors, actors, writing teachers, poets, bloggers, storytellers, lyricists, stand-up comics, journalists and radio essayists at the open mic on the third […]
~ It was the 5th anniversary of the monthly Spoken Word night in Floyd but none of the founders of the event were in attendance. The following entry is from guest reporter Patricia Woodruff, artist and author of Strange Tales of Floyd County. It was a pretty small affair this Spoken Word, but you know […]
It was fitting that Sue Osborne read about the life of William Carlos Williams and his poetry at September’s Spoken Word Open Mic because, like Williams, Sue is a medical doctor and a poet. Her son Mars is a poet too. He read poetry that he wrote in math class (I hope his teacher doesn’t […]
Katherine, Jayn, and I drank red rooibos tea because it was late in the day and rooibos has no caffeine. The sun was setting outside the window of Lucy Monroe’s coffee house in Christiansburg, where Chelsea and Bill were setting up microphone equipment for an evening of jazz and poetry. The subject was coffee and […]
That’s what our emcee Cameron announced to the Spoken Word crowd on Saturday. At 7:30 there were only six readers signed up on a pie plate. “That’s never happened before,” he said. His plea must have worked because by the end of the evening the count had changed to eleven readers. Cameron led us in […]
“Letter Rip” was coined by Black Water Loft’s Grace McCutchan in her recent chalk board announcement for our community’s monthly Spoken Word Open Mic, held at Loft. With 14 readers presenting a variety of literary styles, we did just that on Saturday night. It was a busy night in downtown Floyd with Laura Reed and […]
“Phenomenal” was how I described April’s Spoken Word to Joe when I got home from attending last night. What was most striking about this month’s event was the variety of literary styles that fell under the “spoken word” umbrella and the fact that the roster of performers spanned the generations. There were improv skits, storytelling, […]
The poets came out of the woodwork for a Spring Equinox reading at the Black Water Loft coffee house in downtown Floyd Saturday night. Poems about daffodils and wild strawberries were mixed with readings of Hemingway, Jane Hirschfield, and Shakespeare. There was a leftover love poem from February’s Spoken Word that was cancelled because of […]
“It was a good run,” Café del Sol co-owner Frank Walker was recently quoted as saying. His wife Sally (aka The Countess of Coffee) posted her goodbye on their website. For seven years the café has been a Floyd hub and a beautiful downtown second home to many. For six years the writer’s group I […]
Saturday’s night life in downtown Floyd included a quotable line delivered by poet Mara Robbins. From the Café del Sol Spoken Word stage she announced that “Pat Robertson is to Christians what Kanye West is to musicians,” referring to Robertson’s ludicrous remark about the earthquake in Haiti being a result of the country’s pact with […]
