Poetry Night at the Schuylerville Public Library, September 11

Poet Elaine Kenyon recently started a monthly Poetry Night at the Schuylerville Public Library up in Saratoga County. Over the last couple of years Elaine has immersed herself in the local poetry community, reading at open mics at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs & at the Social Justice Center in Albany, as well as participating in the Poetic License collaboration between the Hudson Valley Writers Guild & the Upstate Artists Guild. In August she took the step to bring a poetry event into her own community.

I took the hour drive up from Albany to check it out & show my support. Ultimately there were 8 of us gathered around 2 tables pushed together in a meeting room off the main reading room of the Library. The room had windows on 3 sides. There was no “stage,” or podium or sound equipment, just people sharing poems, either their own or those that they like written by others. The poems often engendered conversations on the topic of the poems, but not comments or suggestions as in peer-group workshops. And there was no sign-up list, or even a set order of reading; folks just volunteered to read when they felt ready or inspired. It was relaxed & informal.

This being the 23 anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center in NYC, Elaine started off with a memoir piece about working in a mental health facility at the time of the attack, & later read other poems. I read my poem “Another Tuesday” about 9/11 2001 & 9/11 1973 in Santiago Chile with the overthrow of the elected government of Salvadore Allende. Geri, who also shared at other moments poems by W.H. Auden, read one of her own, “The Archangel & the Apostle,” about a priest who was killed at the WTC; the priest had been a boyhood friend of her brother.

Margaret, who shared poems by others, read one with lots of repetitions & I asked if it was a villanelle. She didn’t know but Peter then rattled off the details of a villanelle; he apparently had taught literature & worked as a contract lance writer; the poems he read were his own. He had a copy of John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which he passed around to the group.

Peggy arrived a little late, a shared a couple of her poems; she is a friend of Elaine’s. Another friend was Lisa who said she had one of her poems with her but ended up not reading it, instead read a poem about a butterfly by someone else; she also brought brownies. Ian was the last to arrive, & the youngest; he read from a fistful of pages, one torn from a spiral notebook; both Margaret & Geri had him repeat the end of a couple of his poems, perhaps looking for the “punchline”. 

Lots of good conversation & poems from people who like hearing & reading poems, & sometimes writing some of their own. This is a monthly open mic on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, starts at 6:00PM, at the Schuylerville Public Library, 52 Ferry St. I probably won't be back every month, but perhaps every little once in a while.