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 [...]
And sometimes the spoken word is sung. At Cafe del Sol’s October Spoken Word Open Mic, Carolyn (Kirby) Romano sang THIS original song. She’ll be performing opera with the Kandinsky Trio in a benefit concert for the Jacksonville Center next Saturday at the center. Young Actor’s Co-op’s Abraham “Wolf” came from the Maryland Renaissance Faire [...]
The literary flavor of summer’s Floyd County Moonshine is as striking as the bright red wildflowers on its cover and as local as the next door neighbor … That’s how the story I’m working on about the latest issue of the Floyd-based literary magazine begins. The issue spotlights Floyd writers with a special tribute to [...]
I was in two places at the same time, or nearly. Arriving late to the Spoken Word and leaving early to take pictures for the paper of the all-day Relay For Life, a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society. I was a little discombobulated, but relieved to know that after nearly four years our [...]
An overflowing crowd packed the Café del Sol for June’s Spoken Word Open Mic. With the warm glow of evening sun streaming in, the café was abuzz with a celebratory din left over from the town’s Jubilee festival that day. There was pizza eating, card playing, cappuccino sipping, and socializing, but all quieted to a [...]
One might have thought that April’s Spoken Word would bring seasonal poems about spring, Earth Day, or even taxes. But what we got included a letter from Julius Caesar, some frolicking ferrets, a dead orange, and an adaptation of The Raven involving an appendectomy (quote the surgeon nevermore). Although, Neva Brown did return to the [...]
The Rubik Cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, Abraham Wolf Cherrix told the overflow crowd at March’s Spoken Word night at the Café del Sol. Wolf followed that comment by announcing he would solve the puzzle in less than 3 minutes for his open mic reading [...]
There was no drinking and driving involved in the ride from Floyd down the Pig Path into Radford. And the only moonshine proof there was to be enjoyed was in the readings from the second edition of Floyd County Moonshine at the Coffee Mill on Main Street. Moonshine, in this case, refers to the “flavor” [...]
Sitting in the wallflower chair in the far corner of the café at February’s Spoken Word night, I realized that my nerves at poetry readings are directly related to the size of the crowd that turns out. The bigger it is the bigger they are. From my corner perch I counted 45 people. This is [...]
