Hosting a Poetry Venue

Some time in 2015 I became the co-host of Jim Rogers's poetry series New and Nearby, which ran from September through May at Trotter's Cafe (which became Tillie's Farmhouse).

A good friend of Jim's, Scott Banas, had volunteered to take New and Nearby on when Jim left, but Scott soon moved away, and, having stepped in to be helpful, I became the sole host of the series.

Ironically, when I first attended a reading in the New and Nearby series, I felt alienated.

I read as one of two principal readers at the series shortly thereafter, and I must have been in the habit of going to the events.

It may or may not be unusual for the person running a poetry venue to be a bad poetry listener, but I have to admit to being a bad poetry listener myself - only a few readers ever really got my attention (one was well-known and lamented community member Mike Finley). 

What was personally valuable to me about running the series was that I could have my musical groups open for the poets, and I played twenty- or thirty-minute opening sets with musicians I was working with, including my family. 

I must also admit to being insensitive to the ways in which the poetry readings were inconvenient to the venue. 

Poetry requires quiet in a way that music does not, and the staff of Tillie's Farmhouse resented being shushed -- not to mention restaurant patrons who just wanted to have dinner and didn't care about the poetry.

COVID blessedly put an end to Near and Nearby, and I think our last show was in February of 2020. 

Jim Rogers and I later agreed that Trotters-Tillie's became a bad venue for reading after a 2015 remodel in which a wall was removed that separated a long area (used by the readings) from the rest of the restaurant space. 

___________

Jim had a yearly tradition of publishing a book of poems by poets in the New and Nearby community, and I published a similar book in 2016.

Jim and an associate heavily edited the submissions (an unfortunate precedent for me, as I found something in a submission unacceptable and rewrote it - the writer was gracious, but I regret my edit).

The proceeds from the sale of the 2016 New and Nearby anthology were donated to a food shelf. 

The best publication connected with New and Nearby was Silence by Nora Parker Cox. 

In early 2016 Nora read fabulously her book-length poem Silence, written for the occasion. 

Scott Banas had the idea that we could publish Silence, as we had the yearly New and Nearby anthology.

Nora wanted the proceeds from the sale of Silence to be donated to Reclaim, an organization that provides counseling-therapy services for GLBT youth. 

The book did raise more than it cost to print: we donated about eight hundred dollars to Reclaim.

___________

It's hard to believe that I did that show eight or nine times a year from autumn 2015 to winter 2020. 

I had little talent as an MC, and I rarely performed my own poems.

All of the shows were OK, I think, except for two or three, and I usually had the feeling that the show had been a nice lively community event, giving poets the chance to perform for an interested crowd and to peddle their books.

Jim Rogers said it best: Feel good about it, and move on!

___________







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