Hosting Poetry Readings in Sacramento

There is this feeling I get each time I know I am going to be hosting a reading; it is a mixed feeling of excitement and anxiety. First, there is the email by the events coordinator for the Sacramento Poetry Center, Tim Kahl. He sends out the email to the board and members of the SPC by Thursday every week, and once I see it, I know the event is going to happen. And that mixed feeling assails me throughout the weekend and until the time of the event of when I finally welcome the poets, looking around uneasily, checking if people are already arriving. Attendance at these events depends mainly on members of the organization or anyone in the Sacramento community who is interested in poetry. But there is never a guarantee of good attendance, or any attendance, because much depends on other factors like the weather, the publicity, or even the popularity of poets featured. Some poets will draw their own crowd of fans and fill up the house; others may be from out of town and may not be well-known in Sacramento. Sometimes I feature emerging poets trying to establish themselves through public readings of their works.

The moment of waiting for poetry lovers to arrive is for the host a moment of great tension: Is this going to be a successful event? Are the featured poets going to feel like their time has been wasted? Am I going to end up cancelling this event?  The level of worry is higher if I am featuring poets who have travelled from other states, or even other countries. The reputation of a poetry center depends on whether the events are worthwhile for both the featured poets and the audiences.  The hosting anxiety then is warranted, because if the event fails, you feel as if you have let the poets down. The only consolation, however,  is that most poets know that, at these events, anything can happen, that they may read to a houseful or only to a couple of people. Likewise, most poetry audiences understand these dynamics, most of them are poets who are coming to listen to other poets read—they too might have read to small audiences before. Some of them are interested an opportunity to share their works through the Open Mic; so sometimes the audience of a poetry event is just full of poets.

 Then there is the worry that one or both of the scheduled poets may not show up, then what would all the people (a houseful or just three people) say about such an outcome? Will they judge the event a failure? Will this give bad publicity to the poetry center? [As if poets really have much latitude in their choices of where they read, etc…]  So then you keep checking the gates to catch a glimpse of an arriving poet; they are always easy to spot…because they two are assailed by the same anxieties of whether or not the event is going to be successful. Some are just as nervous or worried as the host. After all it’s our event, we are in this together. We are both poets. We are in essence mostly hosting each other in front of (mostly) fellow poets.

Kevin Simmonds

So then we wait, looking at the clock (events start at 7:30). Most of the time, with the help of fellow board members, I have already set the stage and the PA system. I have arranged the chairs in a semi-circle facing the mic, sometimes in a pew-like arrangement that reminds of being in a church (again poets work with the kind of space they can afford, and often that space is just that, a space, which, thanks to the artistic sensibilities of the poets and the audiences who appreciate their art, the beauty of the space often emerges and fully manifest itself with time…it’s in the subtlety of the aesthetics of a place called poetry center.

For some events, when  I set up the chairs I temporarily just bring out fifteen or twenty chairs, or sometimes, if I have invited students from my college, or if the event has been announced on radio or local TV, which tends to guarantee attendance, I take out forty or more chairs. And one by one they—the members of the audience—arrive, and soon you hear your name called and you know one or both of your poets have arrived. By then you are breaking a sweat (I am always nervous at first) and you greet the poets, introduce yourself if you are meeting them for the first.  In the meantime, more people are trickling in, and you are nervously showing the poets around and you are telling them:  here is the table to display your books if you brought copies, here is some water, you can sit here and wait, do you want to go first or last? …oh it doesn’t matter? So you will read first then… thank you… and so on.

There are at least ten people and by now I am sighing with relief,  there are at least ten people, and ten is quite a crowd for poetry. Then a group of people—perhaps students,  a whole graduate class of eight for UC Davis or Sac State, arrives, and, yes! Five of my students, smiles on faces, arrive—they always seem reassuring in their belief in me, most are coming to the Center for the first time [and that’s a big deal…or not…], and I am nodding at them, I am smiling, I am telling them to feel at home. Help yourself to some water, sit by the fan, grab a free brochure of our events. …

Before long, it’s  7:30 and I am checking the mic for the last time, which always seems like the first, before I greet and welcome everyone to the Sacramento Poetry Center. I always introduce the event as great (because when I do it I know it is a great event); then I make some announcements, after which, of course, the event kicks off officially and I enter that dreamlike state of enjoying the sound of poetry as it awakens my own creative demons…

I love hosting with all its anxieties, and I do it every second Monday at the Center and occasionally at my college. It is an opportunity to meet and interact with other poets all year long. I always try to offer some open mic opportunities since this is one of the best ways to discover and promote (often) new talent. I have compassion for the less confident poet or writer, which sometimes explains why I teach writing to begin with, and this goes all the way back to my days in Zimbabwe in the 1990s when I was involved with the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ), whose goal was to promote aspiring writers, and it spread its influence throughout the country, promoting young writers in schools and rural areas. Working with these writers was as uplifting to me as it was inspiring to them, it was one of the greatest moments I looked forward to each time I got on a bus to travel far to launch a new writer’s group. By 1995, as I was finishing my studies at the University of Zimbabwe, I lived the writer’s life, breathing poetry and working to promote all kinds of writing.

 Then  in May 1996, after a short teaching stint at Ndima Secondary school in Chimanimani, I left the country for the United States , landing in Sacramento, California. I lived in what I truly believed was a city slower than Harare for ten years without any connection with local writers and poets.  There was even a point I lost contact with writers anywhere, particularly those I had worked with in Zimbabwe. Life had taken over, life that demanded to be lived its own [new] terms, just as life. For at least four of those ten years I stopped writing altogether….

….but by 2004, when I had rejoined academia as an adjunct professor, and later as a full timer, it all came back—the writing, the connection  with writers back home, most who were by now well established. Chirere was on demand as key note speaker and facilitator at writers’ workshop, Ignatius Mabasa had produced two best-selling novels, everyone was appearing in intriguing short fiction anthology, others were winning international awards….and I was beginning to smile again, like a poet. Then one day, while grading papers in a workroom at Sacramento City College, I met Bob Stanley (the current poet laureate of Sacramento) and we talked, about teaching, and somehow ended up talking about poetry….and eventually about the Sacramento Poetry Center.  I remember asking, “There is a poetry center in this city?”  And Bob nodded.

That was some time in 2006. Bob, who turned out to be the president of the Sacramento Poetry Center board, invited me to “try it out”, and I went, took a few poems from my collection of over 400 pieces I had created on a blog. That very first night at the SPC I got a chance to share some of my poems and the experience was magical, reminded of the marathon poetry readings I had done in Zimbabwe with the likes of Memory Chirere, Ignatius Mabasa, Charles Chigwada, and others. Something was reawakened in me. Anyway, long story short, by February 2007 I had joined the Sacramento Poetry Center board and I had agreed to host some readings, something I wasn’t sure I could do after such a long time of being disconnected from poetry performance. The first night I hosted I was a nervous wreck, but other than the sweating, I don’t think my nervousness showed to the audiences.

With that first trial, I was hooked, and I decided then that should nervousness persist, it would just have to learn to be part of the process. There was a lot more for me in the hosting than perhaps for the poets; I learned to stay in touch with my own creativity; the Monday events and hosting opportunities became for me some kind of weekly fix, which would allow me to enter a Tuesday- through- Sunday week of furious writing. The hosting of events, with the accompanying uneasiness and occasional uncertainty, became for me a form of recharging. Despite the anxieties, I have never been in a situation to cancel readings; all the readings, except a couple of cases when the second or third poet on a line up did not show up, have been a success, even when I felt they would not be. I have hosted readings that have drawn housefuls and those that have had only eight or ten attendees. In every case, the poets always seem to appreciate the company of other poets, and they have shared their work with enthusiasm.

So why do I love hosing that much? I am not your usual call-and-response, humorous MC or host, but I have my style, and I am told I am funny.  I make people laugh…even when I am a wreck inside. That’s the beauty of it. Sometimes I leave those readings drained, yet I still feel creatively recharged. Some readings have been wonderful, other have approached greatness. I have worked with all kinds of local and out of state poets, and I have hosted one Zimbabwean writer, Christopher Mlalazi, and just recently (September 12), one of the features was an Irish poet, writer, publisher, Jessie Lendennie, who co-featured with one of her poets, Kevin Simmonds. And at each of these readings, I have also offered the stage to many promising aspiring poets through the open mic.

 Jessie Lendennie

Hosting keeps me in touch with the creative world; it jolts me to liveliness and the vibrancy or stamina the creative process requires. It opens up new possibilities and allows for networking with fellow poets and writers. It raises the adrenaline rush the creative state needs. I have done it for four years so far, and I look forward to many more years of doing it.