Poets and Artists who show up to the Wired Wash Cafe in Santa Cruz, CA at 135 Laurel Street Friday nights at 7:00 pm for the open mic sign up (Show starts at 7:30). www.wiredpoets.com
THE WIRED POETS as we like to refer to them, are poets who've lived hard, long and deliberate, seeing everything. Their experiences may not be that different from the man doing his laundry a few feet away from our mic stand. The Wired Wash Cafe readings is the only free speech open mic in Santa Cruz featuring poets from all over the country.
TESTIMONIAL:
...the weekly reading that Morrisey and Robin have turned into one of the premier venues for small press poets on the West Coast. Past featured readers have included: A.D. Winans, Neeli Ckherkovski, Hugh Fox, John Dorsey, S.A. Griffin, Klipschutz, Gerald Nicosia, Joe Pachinko, William Taylor, Jr., Michelle Tea, Raindog, Café Barbarians, Jennifer Blowdryer and so many more... Robin tapes each reading and sells them as DVD’s, as well as sending copies to “The Poetry Collection” at the University at Buffalo / The State University of New York. There the readings are stored in perpetuity, along with the work of hundreds of other small press poets.
The Wired Wash Café Poetry Reading happens every Friday at 7:00 p.m. Posters are put up around Santa Cruz, Berkley and San Francisco prior to each reading. As promised, my name was indeed in a funky lighted sign that was hung outside the Laundromat. The washers and dryers went through their rinse, spin, and dry cycles; as each reader cycled through their five minutes. Dirty laundry, clean clothes, poets, and street people tumbled together. Do you think poetry gets the stains out?
That afternoon before the reading, Morrisey took me to the Trader Joes where I discovered corked-wine for two bucks a bottle. “It’s a lot better than Mad Dog.” he assured me.
“Well in that case, I’ll buy a whole case.” I told him.
The party following the reading was held in Robin’s apartment. A place that doubles as a recording studio, publishing center and contemporary nut-house-poetry-museum; he also sleeps and eats there. Lots of wine was drunk, pictures taken, interviews recorded, chapbooks signed and swapped, and lifetime friendships made.
Our small press community is virtual. We know writers across the globe who we have never met. Through submissions, joint projects, reviews, essays, random correspondence and publishing our poetry, we grow our writing family. A family not defined by place, as a village or city would be; or by blood, as tribes or clans might be, but rather by a compulsion to write and manipulate language. We are word artists.
So what? I didn’t need to go to Santa Cruz and return exhausted. Ellaraine, Brian and Christopher could have remained as faceless as hundreds of other writers and publishers I know. But being there made me realize; there is magic in sitting across the table from another writer. Something happens to the texture of our friendship when we learn about another poet’s day job and personal struggles; when we bitched about the writing biz, and become alive.
- charles p. ries, milwaukee, wi |
Paul