Traverse City Record-Eagle

Entertainment Update

Related Photos

  • Douglas Tesner

    Poets'
November 6, 2009

Writers love the crowd at Poets' Night Out

BY MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS

TRAVERSE CITY -- Ali Sullivan has been writing poetry seriously for five years and meets regularly with a poetry group through the Michigan Writers cooperative.

But there's nothing quite as supportive as Poets' Night Out, an annual reading by selected area poets that has become the "it" poetry event in the region.

"Hearing people clap and cheer for a poem is so much fun," said Sullivan, who will read at the 13th Annual Poets' Night Out Sunday at the City Opera House. "You don't get to do that often. Poetry can tend to be a really quiet, solo experience."

The event begins at 7 p.m. and features poets from around a 10-county region who will read their winning entries from a fall contest. Sponsors are the Friends of the Traverse Area District Library, Horizon Books, Book O Rama, Joyful Noise Daycare and the Traverse Area District Library.

"We have kids reading that are as young as 12 and we have people in their 80s and 90s reading and everything in between," said Sandy Robey, event co-founder and a reference desk librarian at TADL. "It's kind of a jaw-dropping thing when you see so many people of all ages (enjoying) poetry."

That goes for the audience, too, she said.

"A lot of us in high school hated poetry because we had to read it. Here, people are reading it to you. You hear it, it's not off the page, and I think that makes the difference. It's really a memorable experience," she said.

This year's poems represent "a huge range of experience and emotions" and a wide variety of styles and topics, from war to laundry, in free verse and structured forms, said Chris Bazzett, one of two jurors who whittled nearly 200 poets' entries down to 25.

"To say which are my favorites would be like asking me which of my children are my favorites," Bazzett said. "A poet who seems grounded in real life always appeals to me; one whose poetry speaks to the everyday world but perhaps casting a new light on it. I grow especially fond of the poems that we get a chance to discuss at the workshop on the afternoon before the reading because I get to talk with the poets about how their work affected me and hear the stories behind the poems."

Sullivan, a teacher at Traverse City East Junior High, wrote the first draft of her free verse poem, "Little Poems," while her students were taking a test.

"I was standing in front of my class watching them and it just came to me," said Sullivan, whose language arts student, Jacob Gerstner, also will read at the event. "Because they're like little poems walking around bruising each other, trying to figure out what life is about."

The event is hosted by Paul Stebleton, who won the first Poets' Night Out in 1997 and has been emcee ever since. Stebleton, owner of the used and rare bookstore Book O Rama near Lake Ann and a sometime juror, also sponsors one of two audience prizes of $50. The other is sponsored by the family of Kyle Sonneman, a former Poets' Night Out regular who died a few years ago.

In addition to the audience prizes, 14 juror prizes ranging from $15 to $50 are awarded during the second half of the program. They include student prizes for high school and middle school poems.

Robey said Poets' Night Out will go national in March when it is presented to librarians at the biennial Public Library Association National Conference in Portland, Ore. All 200 poets who entered this year's contest will be invited to read at TADL during an April open mic kickoff to National Poetry Month.

"Poets' Night Out is really a unique poetry contest that Traverse City should be quite proud of," Bazzett said.

Admission to Sunday's event, which features refreshments and entertainment by guitarist Pat Ivory, is $5 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. A chapbook of the winning entries will be available for $5 at the TADL circulation desk and at the Friends Gift Shop near the back of the library.

For more information visit www.poetsnightout.org or contact Robey at 932-8500.

Text Only