by Anna Weaver | Jul 25, 2020 | All Posts, tips for open mic hosts, tips for open mic performers, virtual open mics
One of the things I say a lot when I try—and I try often—to convey just how great an open mic is (or was) is that you just had to be there. In the room. In the space. With all the other people. Breathing in the poems and the music… …and the air. Which in most states...
by Anna Weaver | Nov 30, 2019 | All Posts, US open mics
For a flatlander like myself, New England is kinda…well…confusing. As in easy-to-get-lost confusing. As in bring-a-roll-of-thread, keep-an-eye-out-for-Jared-the-goblin-king confusing. It’s hilly, for one thing. The trees are too many and, by Oklahoma standards, too...
by Anna Weaver | Jun 22, 2019 | All Posts, US open mics
A couple years back, when I found the Riff Raff Arts Collective in Princeton, WV (pop: 5,822), it was hands down the smallest town where I’d found a poet-friendly open mic. A month later, the Paducah Writer’s Group in Paducah, KY (pop: 24,941), though small as...
by Anna Weaver | May 29, 2019 | All Posts, tips for open mic performers
A while back, I wrote about how to introduce yourself and your work at an open mic. This post is that post’s bookend. Open mic poets (and musicians and storytellers and comics) are an earnest lot. We’re amateurs and we know it—amateurs who aim to get better,...
by Anna Weaver | Apr 10, 2019 | All Posts, US open mics
Think of a thing you love doing. Sailing, maybe. Or knitting. Or bird watching or baking or basketball. Whatever. Now imagine having done that thing for, say, 2 hours, and now it’s 8:30 pm. On a weeknight. Random dude #1: Y’know, you can do 3 more hours of that thing...
by Anna Weaver | Apr 4, 2019 | All Posts, US open mics
I’ve said it before and I’ll surely say it again: Open mics are ephemeral. What happens there—whether there is Seattle or Gainesville or New York City or Paducah—on any given night hasn’t happened before and won’t happen again. By showing up, to perform or to listen...
