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Since 1975, the Mercury Cafe has been a home to poets, punks, rebels, and artists from all walks of life. They serve organic-oriented eats and host many different types of events, including music, poetry, dance lessons, and tarot readings.
The Green Mill is sophisticated and informal with a warm glowing atmosphere steeped in the heady sounds of the early 1930s and 1940s. The bar is patterned after Clark Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem. Today, the Green Mill, in keeping with owner Dave Jemilo’s philosophy for a proper mix of down-to-earth friendliness and class, maintains an authenticity of the Forties in service, price, and music, perfected upon with the steady Sunday night performance of the internationally acclaimed Uptown Poetry Slam, which Marc Smith began at the Mill in 1986.
Founded in the early 1970s, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe began as a living room salon in the East Village apartment of writer and poet Miguel Algarin. Today, the cafe is a nonprofit organization that provides a forum for innovative poetry, music, hip hop, video, visual arts, comedy, and theatre from underrepresented artists. Programming includes poetry and prose readings, theatrical and musical performances, and visual art exhibits. The cafe is well-known for a popular weekly Poetry Slam judged by randomly selected audience members.
The Parma Chai Out of the Blue Community Arts Gallery is a beloved art gallery, music venue, and literary salon known for its lively local art exhibits and music shows. With thirty years of experience in the arts and hosting events both public and private, formal and casual, the team behind the gallery has always worked to ensure art flourishes in the Cambridge neighborhood. At the gallery, there is space available for artists and makers to work in, as well as room for art shows, music, rehearsals, and other creative activities such as classes, dance, and yoga.
Through its live programming, workshops, publications, website, and special events, The Poetry Project promotes, fosters, and inspires the reading and writing of contemporary poetry by presenting contemporary poetry to diverse audiences; increasing public recognition, awareness, and appreciation of poetry and other arts; providing a community setting in which poets and artists can exchange ideas and information; and encouraging the participation and development of new poets from a broad range of styles.
Volumes Bookcafe is an independent bookstore cafe in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. Volumes is a family-owned business, brought to life by two Chicago-area sisters whose careers have always been intertwined with books. They host monthly book clubs, open mics and comedy nights, weekly trivia, and StoryTime twice a week, along with a number of author and literary events.
“I no longer want to do this thing of speaking for the voiceless, it’s about passing the microphone and allowing those people to finally speak for themselves.” In this video produced by the Guardian Labs, author and spoken word artist Pages Matam talks about the power of poetry and creating spaces where shared experiences can act as both inspiration and a catalyst for change.
“What does it mean to write something urgent right now?” Don’t Be Nice is a 2018 documentary directed by Max Powers that follows a group of poets from the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City’s East Village who grapple with the political climate punctuated by the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements as they prepare for the National Poetry Slam championship during the summer of 2016.
“Fear of joy is the darkest of captivities.” In this Button Poetry video, Phil Kaye reads his poem “Teeth” at Gray Area in San Francisco.
“I wanted to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, chronicles the life and work of poet and political activist Sonia Sanchez, including her emergence as a seminal figure in the Black Arts Movement, her tireless political activism, and a poetry career so great Maya Angelou called her “a lion in literature’s forest.” Sanchez is the recipient of the 2022 Jackson Poetry Prize.
