Connie Fenner is a local business owner, community connector, and proud breast cancer survivor. She’s committed to supporting orgs that bring people together to create healthier communities, including powering our Go See This series this season.
This month, guest author Elisabeth Lewis Corley writes about a new series in Pittsboro – Poetry @ The Plant, and we invite you to go see this…
Once a month, on a Wednesday night at six, six poets read from their work, for about six minutes, for about forty minutes of poetry. It’s Poetry @ The Plant. It isn’t a cypher nor a poetry slam, but young poets comfortable in those contexts also seem perfectly comfortable here. The venue differs from your favorite independent bookstore hosting a reading from a poet promoting their most recent collection, in that it serves local brews. And yet poets reading here would be recognizable on a book tour. You might see a high school student and a high school teacher reading on the same night. You might hear from a poet laureate. You might meet a military veteran who has served in war zones all over the world, and who is described as finding nothing more frightening than stepping up to that microphone. But they do step up.
On May 8, 2024, Silk Hope poet Joanie McLean was the first to read, and she included some work from her latest collection, Like Wind Into Air (Redhawk Publications, 2023).
To step back
from this pond
these fields
this farm—
to shed this smaller sense of home
to see that it has not been enough
There was a palpable hush as the usual clatter of the day drained away, and the audience offered the words in the air a different kind of attention.
The roster of poets changes every month, but the organizers, Chatham County Commissioner Karen Howard, Fair Game Beverage Company ringmaster (and author) Lyle Estill, and events wizard Melissa Frey, try to keep it to six poets. The goal is to share poetry with the community and to hear the poetry that emerges from the community. And also, of course, to introduce new folks to the wide range of offerings at The Plant—food, beverages, clothing, performances, and more. The commercial message zooms in for about ten seconds, max—blink and you miss it—and the poetry reading is free.
Poetry @ The Plant has only been around since December 2023 and in that time has hosted six poetry readings. When it began, no one knew who would show up, and, at first, maybe twenty-five to thirty people did. In the lamplit Fair Game Beverage Wheelhouse Tasting Room, complete with enormous circular window and beverage casks safe and resting behind bars, there is room for thirty-four to sit downstairs and fifteen to twenty folks upstairs, mostly standing. The room holds up to fifty-two people, and lately it has been called upon to do just that.
The venue and the vibe are warm, and the crowd is welcoming. Event coordinator Melissa Frey stresses that there is an openness to voices of all kinds and a focus on the opportunity to connect. No one pre-selects or dictates what will be read. (So, on any given night, it might or might not be appropriate for children.)
Frey, the founding board president of the Chatham Marketplace, the local food co-op in Pittsboro, laughs when recalling the early days of that organization, when they used to gather for poetry slams on the front porch of the co-op. “Not quite the same thing as Poetry @ The Plant, but poetry seems to be a theme.”
Karen Howard said, “I was so sure that poetry could be a thing in Chatham. A way of communicating our feelings and our thoughts. Complicated feelings. Poetry can be that vehicle. Every single poet is different. Poetry is for everybody. The Plant is a great place to do it. It is so unexpected and quirky. Yes. That’s Chatham.”
Howard was eager to describe the work of a young high school student who read in April. “Incredibly brave and poised. Reading after other, older readers, including a teacher. Norah Myer is her name.” The poem Myer performed channeled a classmate’s trauma, and the room was riveted by her poem and her performance of it, the generosity of spirit she embodied, and the deep empathy.
That seems to be the goal of Poetry @ The Plant. Howard is convinced it has the capacity to bring people together. The idea of a poetry series started with another unexpected event at The Plant, Death Faire, a three-day, annual event, now in its ninth year, focused on the exploration of grief as a path to leading one’s best life. Howard helped coordinate the poetry for Death Faire in 2023 and noticed the diversity in the turnout, all races and ages, all different kinds of poetry. According to Howard, Lyle Estill told her they had to keep this momentum going and proposed a monthly poetry series.
Howard was on board. She wanted to see diverse poets, more poets of color, gender diversity, different ages. Howard said, “I knew that was what poetry is. I will never write a haiku. People think poetry is what we did in high school. You don’t have to like Shakespeare or have read Chaucer to be a writer.” And so the series began. As Howard puts it, “Virgin poets welcome. Come and listen. The crowd is welcoming. It has just blossomed.”
Both Howard and Estill write poetry, and sometimes, when something went wrong with the schedule, or they could not find six poets to read on a given night, they read their own work. Most of the time now though, there always seem to be readers available for the six available slots. They have begun to wonder whether they can expand to an hour.
Gathering poets for Poetry @ The Plant has mostly been happening by word of mouth. A blast goes out to friends and people who have come to readings in the past, and poets are asked to invite their circles. Information that makes it clear all are welcome is posted on The Plant’s website. The circle gets wider, people reach out.
Sometimes the outreach comes from long-established writers, like the Black Socks Poets. According to their Facebook page, “The Black Socks Poets is a constellation of poets who meet every other week around the year to read their work and receive input from other members. Formed in the 1990s, an evolving entity has continued to get together, reading new poems and getting suggestions from the others for improvement. Current members are Grey Brown, Ralph Earle, Janis Harrington, Maura High, Paul Jones, Debra Kaufman, Florence Nash, Gary Phillips, Liza Wolff-Francis.”
Howard was delighted to hear from them. “The fact that they wanted to come out and have a night on their own? Marvelous. Why not?”
Howard stresses that the tent for Poetry @ The Plant is expansive and billowing and that she prioritizes it for herself, even with all of her other competing responsibilities. “I set it up as non-negotiable for me. I was one of those people who stuck these things in a box underneath my bed. But I get to write about those complicated feelings. I’m inviting people to do the same thing. And the fact that we are getting younger folks and black and brown folks to come out is super exciting to me. Some people come every single time.”
And, for the record, at the reading on May 8th, the work of one of the distinguished poets reading that night, Margot Lester, did include haiku.
The Short Version
Who: Organizers Karen Howard, Lyle Estill, and Melissa Frey
What: Poetry @ The Plant
When: Every second Wednesday 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Where: Fair Game Beverage Wheelhouse Tasting Room, Lorax Lane, Pittsboro, NC 27312
Cost: Free! (but feel free to come early and grab a beverage or a delicious Jamaican dinner from Kingston 99)
Parking: There are a couple of parking lots at The Plant, with plenty of room to park near the venue.
Accessibility: The Plant has parking spaces reserved for handicapped patrons and the venue is wheelchair friendly.
For more information: https://www.theplantnc.com/event-details/poetry-the-plant
Leave a Reply