We're a bunch of amateurs. We try to do as good a job as we can but all of us have more important jobs, interests, relationships. With little time, and even less equanimity, to spare.
The one thing you can count on for sure is the open mic. Followed by the featured poet's reading. So far both have ticked over like clockwork.
A little less certain is the live music, since that depends on me finding decent musicians who will do it for nothing, and who, after agreeing to play, actually show up. As with the poetry, so far that has gone off 100% as well, but some day we’ll show up to silence. Maybe we can try a Karaoke night.
The stuff on the internet is the least certain of all, since none of it is essential.
Leading up to each event I try to do a bio of the featured poet, then a batch of poems, then an interview. It’s hard to get other people to do these for me, especially to enter it all properly on the website and Facebook page, which takes time and diligence and endless stressful fussiness, so some day I”m going to say to heck with it for the month. But so far I haven’t. Mainly because my real work, which brings home the bacon, is only part time.
After the event, we've been doing a little summary, a longer summary, a photo gallery and lately a video gallery. Except for the short summary, other volunteers do all of these. Volunteers who all have full-time jobs or university studies. So you will occasionally not notice one or more of them. What you don't see you may not miss.
In any case, there is something real, substantial, and evolving here. Very different people are coming together and bringing the best, most appropriate things together with them.
A case in point: Previously, to be followed by listeners, poems had to be read slowly. But now that we have them on video, readers can add another level of art which isn't on the page, which is a product solely of how the poems are read. The missed content can then be fetched from the videos.
We're moving ahead, creating something new, and then solving the new problems that come with it. Those solutions move us even further ahead.
If anyone wants to contribute something, we're open to it.
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