20 Things Not to Do at an Open Poetry Reading [by Daniel Nester]

1. Write your name illegibly on the sign-up sheet.

2. Complain to host when he/she can’t read/pronounce your last name.

3. Go over the allotted time, so much so that you are mistaken for the “featured” reader, who has traveled three hours on an interstate to promote her most recent book, and has advertised the event on her personal website, Facebook author page, sent announcements college alumni listserv (undergraduate and graduate), as well as posted to Twitter and Snapchat accounts.

4. Go over time by reading a poem that combines several short poems into a single, multisectioned SuperPoem®, which uses different voices (precocious child, mermaid, Muddy Waters) and which features with an epigraph, a joke in Latin, which you do not translate and yet giggle to yourself before proceeding with main body of the poem.

5. Tell host you need to read first, last, or “when my friends get here.”

6. While onstage, complain about how bad most poetry is then fail to realize the mountain of social privilege and assumed power required to proclaim oneself the final gatekeeper of what counts as good or bad poetry.

7. Complain about writing workshops.

8. Then lead one yourself.

9. Read poem you just wrote about being outside at a coffee shop, which addresses your thoughts about how hard it is to write a poem in a coffee shop, what with all clanging of porcelain and milk getting frothed.

10. Mention journal your poem was published in before you read it, as if to say, you better like this poem.

11. Complain about poetry slam’s format and hip-hop MC style, being competitive or too showy or adhering to some random, three-minute limit.

12. Proceed to perform a poem, in hip-hop MC style, that clocks in at two minutes, 57 seconds.

13. Plan another open mic with the same people at the open mic where you are reading.

14. Prick thigh with ballpoint pen every time anyone says the following words: “darkness,” “fuck,” “loamy,” “gleam,” “amongst,” “nevermore,” “nothingness,” “cumquat,” “capitalism,” “shame.”

15. Complain about the exclusiveness and ivory tower mentality of colleges and all those student-types who take creative writing classes.

16. Talk about how you first discovered poetry with professor X in college.

17. Avoid speaking into the microphone provided by your host, then ask if people can hear you.

18. Read narrative lyric poem about any of the following: 1. your dog; 2. going out into the woods and feeling vaguely religious; 3. Sharing hummus with your lover.

19. Precede your poem by explaining everything about the poem—the story, inspiration, place it was written, time of year the action takes place—and then repeat this same information in the title of the poem. 
For example, your poem might be inspired by your going to art galleries with an ex-lover in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, in the middle of winter. Explain all this, and then introduce your poem entitled “Visiting Art Galleries with Ex-Lover, Chelsea, Mid-Winter, 2009.”

20. Promote an open mic at another open mic.

Comments

[Robert Beveridge]

*kumquat

And jesus, yes, #19.

[Drew]

Ohmygawd, all of it is so sad and true. Thanks for the laugh.

[Lisa Vihos]

Very well said. I am going to an open mic tonight. I have taken note. (Oh, did I mention I am the featured reader?) p.s. thanks for hitting the nail on the head. 20 times.

[[email protected]]

I just wanted to use this box to promote an open mic happening at McGeary's Irish Pub on the 23rd of this month.

Thanks Dan!

[Daniel Nester]

And what better way to promote an open mic than on a 12-month-old post and not mention the city!