Library celebrates anniversary of poetry café program
By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Strathmore Municipal Library hosted a celebration, Feb. 14, for the first anniversary of its Poetry Café, which creates an open mic environment for its attendees.
“We are seeing over 30 young adults and teens come, although anyone is welcome to attend, to perform any sort of thing that they would like to do,” said Laura Henderson, public services manager for the library. “Sometimes they do poems or songs that they have written themselves, sometimes they perform others, but this month, because it is our one-year anniversary celebration, we had a few extra treats and we invited everyone to dress up a bit fancier.”
Henderson explained she was approached several years ago with the idea to launch a poetry café by Michael Ajirireloja, a local youth who expressed a passion for mental health in youth and young adults, and a desire to see a program established for people to express themselves.
The library has taken to hosting the program on the second Friday of every month, with the doors opening at 6:30 p.m. to the public, and the program starting at 7:00 p.m.
“It is a larger undertaking than a lot of our programs. We really do turn a portion of the library into a little café with tables, twinkly lights, and a mini stage that we have,” said Henderson. “We approached it originally as a poetry slam type of event. We went in with a format of you had to register and we scheduled times, (Ajirireloja) would announce the next people coming up, and that sort of thing.”
She explained the team behind the café realized quickly, registration for the program created a barrier to entry, with many who were curious being reluctant to commit to an expectation of them to perform.
Instead, the poetry café was restructured as the open mic space it has settled into being today. Given a lack of rigid formatting, performances have even included improv showings and skits that attendees have performed.
“Our first couple of sessions of the program really did look a lot different from this one. We had about 16 to 20 for the first couple, but we very quickly were seeing well over 30 people attending,” said Henderson. “We originally held this around the fireplace area in the front foyer of the library, but we grew out of that very quickly so now we have moved into the main library and we transform the children’s area into the café in order to accommodate. We have had up to 45 in that space and that is close to the capacity without making some big changes to the way we are running the program.”
Among the ideas for the future of the program is to potentially run a “Young Poets Café” which would run during school hours instead of outside of library operation hours and would see classes invited to come in and perform while their poetry units are being explored in school.
If there are any businesses or restaurants that are interested in hosting a poetry night, the library is open to exploring the idea as well, though no steps in that direction have yet been taken.