Friday, April 29, 2011

"Speak Your Word" Open Mic: Mission Accomplished

Originally Posted on June, 2006

Tonight's Open Mic at the Open Book center was absolutely amazing! The collaboration with the Twin Cities gay men's Writer's Group, The Loft and Pride Alive resulted in a quality evening for all who attended and participated.

Among the highlights, local spoken word artist Kevin "Kaoz" Moore simply blazed the stage! So did other spoken word artists Michael Antonio Bosch, Wonder Dave, Rev. Pat D. ...well, everyone rocked! If you want to know these new faces of the literati, check 'em out at various spoken word events around The Cities! We also got a good mix of poetry, prose and non-fiction from the rest of the participants.

There was a great prose by Laura Lively, the only woman on tonight's program, about a polyamory situation that was fantastic! During intermission, I informed her that "polyamory was the new black." She cracked up!


Autumnbridge Media proprietor, Scott Schumacher, also read a couple of his poems. One was an ode to meeting his partner, Michael Larson. I must admit in embarassing the couple after the poem with an audience chorus of "awwwwwww." My apologies, guys!

For those who were wondering, I did read some of my material. I began with "Scene Off of Gay.com," which I can never do it as well as Dan Adolphson did at The Boy From Reseda book release party last year. I followed with After Party's "Eighteen" in perhaps my best reading of this piece and ended with a piece I have not read in years: "Millennium March on Washington, 2000" from The Boy From Reseda. The entire program ended with a reworked version of last year's Pride poem. I included some audience participation to help "bring it home." My hosting...I did just fine.

In all, I did not get a packed house. However, we had a lot more people attend this event than Open Book/The Loft usually sees at a program during this time of year. That was the key to the success of this program. Not to mention the amazing quality of the participants that night. Overall, the consensus by everyone who was there tonight pointed to a huge success for the overall program.

With that said, I want to thank The Loft, Pride Alive, Wilde Roast Cafe and the Twin Cities Gay Men's Writer's Group for being a part of this amazing night! Expect more collarborations to come with these entities!

On a related note, Pride Alive's own literary 'zine,  Outsight Magazine released their latest edition tonight at the Open Mic. I have two poems inside of this issue: "The Attraction Paradigm" and last year's Pride poem. Most of the participants tonight also have submissions in this edition of the magazine.

1 comment:

  1. PREVIOUS COMMENTS

    Dave Harvey wrote: Randy, A great job MCing the event which I think went very well. Sorry Tim and I had to leave missing your reading and several others.

    Michael Larson wrote: Yes, you definitely put Scott and I in the spotlight with the “AWWW!” moment! It was a blush moment, but so sweet too.

    I was very happy with the turnout as well as the awesome content! Wish I could have stayed the rest of the time, especially to hear you read again!

    ReplyDelete