Hey Everyone,
I thought I would just share with you guys my experience of the "San Francisco Annual Poets Under the Dome Open Mic Night" so that hopefully some of you very talented poets can make it up next year!
First let me begin by saying if you haven't been to San Francisco City Hall yet you should definitely check it out. That place is awesome! And the fact that they are actually allowed to hold a Open Mic Night in City Hall under the massive dome is already beyond me and amazing!
To begin, I walked in late because I was coming from class and I simply couldn't bring myself to walk out early during Marilyn's Poem, which was very powerful as well, people had already begun reading and performing there poems which was quite exciting! The seats were arranged in rows facing a small stage and I sat somewhere in the middle. It was so nice to see young girls in the six grade performing slam poems! And on top of that they were speaking about very important civil and community issues. It was really crazy how informative their poems were and both inspiring and inspirational to see how well they were performing at such a young age! There was quite a lot of people there so after all the pre-selected poets performed, they had a lottery drawing for whoever in the audience wanted to perform. Basically, they had all interested parties write their name down and put it in a hat from which they drew from. This was the first time I'd ever seen this since I've only performed at the local cafe by my house before so I was pretty stunned. Just waiting to see whether they'll draw your name to go up and speak in front of all those people is nerve-wracking. Probably, more so than actually reading your poem.
Anyway, one of the most priceless moments was when a guy, high as kite, went up. He didn't even have a poem written or memorized!. He just went up and started mumbling about how he thought it would be more inspirational to just speak whatever came to his mind. He can imagine what he sounded like... I was struggling to keep myself from laughing as he proceeded to tell everyone his life story, not because his life was funny but because of the way he was speaking about it, "This one time... a girl gave me and my friends a pound of grass after our band performed and guess what we did... we went straight back to our van and smoked it all." It was priceless! Sorry if it sounds like I'm making fun of those who smoke. That is not my intention. Just trying to retell a funny incident.
Anyway, after that I pretty much just took a look around the marvelous building that was City Hall before heading back to BART. Hope you guys can make it out to this event next year! Take Care!
Haha damn dude that sounds like avery entertaining night. I'm surprised they had little kids performing slam poetry and am glad whatever education they are apart of allows them to try something so diverse and out of the norm of typical subjects. It goes beyond just poetry but a unique and powerful way of self expression, which little kids are good at.
ReplyDeleteI think it's cool
ReplyDeleteDamn. Talk about an interesting experience. I have been to city Hall, and you are right. It is beautiful. A program for the blind took us all on a tour. The thing I noticed the most was the marble floor. I sat down on the steps, at the brginning of our tour, and a thousand ideas came to me. One of them was that I wanted to write how such beautiful things could be made like that floor with the steps going down to meet the podium. Yet there are so many ugly things too about the city, like the homeless people that are being tossed out of shelters, for lack of room, and the instable living, because of the fast pace bussiness expectations. Besides the human trafic there is freedom. It made me wonder if freedom had a price. Just thought I would share those thoughts with all of you.
ReplyDeleteFantastic, Josh. Love your appreciation of the poetry of the youngsters there, and your description of the wacky chaos of the whole scene as well. Plus City Hall! Gold leaf on the domes! And just the whole Civic Center Plaza, great place. Opera House, Symphony Hall, Asian Art Museum, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium… of course they open it to poetry. Poetry belongs to the people! and City hall belongs.. to the people… and civic center too… not only, one hopes, to the people who can afford the opera tickets :) Poetry remains steadfastly resistant to commodification, doesn't it. —kw
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