Great Newspaper Article On Albany’s Open Poetry Mic “The School Of Night. 2004
LIVE POETS SOCIETY A VIBRANT OPEN-MIKE SCENE LETS THE REGION’S WORDSMITHS HAVE THEIR SAY
JOSEPH DALTON STAFF WRITER
Section: ARTS-EVENTS, Page: I1
Sunday, April 18, 2004
The bar is the magnet until poet R.M. Engelhardt takes the stage. Conversations cease, and loners in dark corners raise their heads from their note pads. But they don’t put down their pens inspiration may strike before their time in the spotlight. A saxophonist and string bass player segue from a wandering vamp to more directed music, following the beat, the direction of the poet’s words.
Engelhardt eats the mike. His voice booms. Following the crest of his verses, he slowly crescendos toward a shout, then hushes to an amplified whisper:
“These words are my religion. This voice is my church. This poetry is my existence. And nothing else matters.”
It’s true, at least for a couple of hours and for the dozen or so poets who have gathered in a dingy nightclub on a cold weeknight in downtown Albany to be a part of the “School of Night.”
Words fly,'' says Dain Brammage, describing the monthly open-mike night, now in its fifth year. The evening's regular participants, he says,write to offend or to enlighten, but more sensitive people are definitely offended.”
Known in daylight hours as Dale Walker, he is a 42-year-old computer programmer and father of three. Rather than channel his emotional angst into a garage band, for a few nights every month he becomes poet Dain Brammage. “I don’t often write pretty poetry,” he says.
The other denizens of “School of Night” are mostly men. A few wear cool slouchy hats or wire-rim glasses, and there’s plenty of facial topiary. But also in the crowd are clean-shaven guys in sport coats who probably came straight from the office, a couple of Gen Y kids with prominent piercings and several long-haired women who look like they’d belong better at a New Age ritual.
It’s a self-selected crowd, as hip as you’ll find anywhere in the region except at any of the 18 other poetry nights that happen every month.
The Capital Region has become a veritable poets colony, where groups of writers regularly congregate to read out,'' listen and support each other.School of Night” is just one of the more gritty and colorful gatherings. (See box on I? for complete listings.) At places like Clayton’s Caribbean Restaurant in Albany, the Saratoga Springs Public Library and the Woodstock Town Hall, poetry is coming off of the page and being put on the stage.
Getting a reaction
It keeps you from being stagnant and in a rut and boring yourself and everybody else,'' says poet Jason Dalaba, 27, of the value of open-mike nights, which are different from poetry readings that typically feature only one poet.It’s fun and good to get a reaction from people.”
There’s no warning at “School of Night” of when it’s your time to read; names are drawn out of a bowl. (The same bowl is passed around later for contributions.) Only original poetry is allowed, and there’s an informal limit of three minutes.
When it’s Dalaba’s turn, he offers two short pieces. As he reads, he appears to be entirely focused on his computer-printed pages of verse, and yet he says he gets feedback from the body language of the audience. They give him brief but hearty applause, even a few hoots and hollers. It’s the typical response all evening long.
Amy Fortin, 22, says she draws inspiration from her fellow poets who “just get up there and read their heart.”
The youngster of the group, Fortin uses the stage name Screamer, which she says is taken from a song by the band Good Charlotte and is not a reflection of her performance style. She has been writing poetry since grade school, sometimes obsessively. A college professor gave her soap crayons so she could make notes on her shower wall.
I have all this stuff inside of me ... and the only way I can get my emotions out so people understand is poetry.'' Being an occasional participant atSchool of Night” has helped Fortin look at her writing in new ways, including “what I can read (in public), and what no one else can read.”
Rush to readings
“Just to hear the creativity that comes out of these people” is amazing, says Dan Wilcox, a poet and longtime organizer of poetry nights. His monthly open mike recently moved from the shuttered Changing Spaces Gallery to the Lark Street Bookshop. It regularly draws several dozen participants and listeners. Like other open mikes, there’s often a featured poet, whether local or from out of the region, who reads several pieces through the night.
When I grew up around here, I would have crawled through broken glass to get to a poetry reading, but there weren't any,'' says Wilcox, 58.Now there’s loads (of readings), and that’s a good healthy sign … a diversity. Who knows what new ideas people will bring?”
The biggest reward, he says, “is when a person reads for the very first time. Everybody cheers and claps. … It might be good or it might be lousy, but everybody thinks it’s great because they climbed up on stage and broke that barrier.”
Most poets who stick around, according to Wilcox’s observations, will develop either by the process of osmosis at open readings or through more focused study.
It's a funny thing: All these poets don't buy a lot of poetry books, but if you go to an open-mike you can't help but hear what others do,'' he says.The ones that pay attention and are serious develop new topics … they get involved in writing groups and their work changes … the material matures.”
Wilcox says the Albany poetry scene as it exists today with an emphasis on public readings began to take shape during the early to mid-1990s. It was the same time that poetry slams emerged out of Chicago. We built our audience in a different way, so slam never really took off,'' he says.Now we’ve got younger poets working in the hip-hop style and they’re drawn to the slam style.”
GOING BEYOND
I've all but retired from performing,'' says Thom Francis.You go to open mikes for some years, you do the feature (reading), and there’s no other avenue to go. That’s where Albany Poets comes in.”
Albany Poets Inc. is a new organization seeking to expand the local poetry scene beyond open-mike nights, which are primarily poets reading for poets.
Open mikes are a steppingstone to get a reaction,'' says Francis, who appreciatesthe rush of being on stage.” He estimates that the region has 150 to 200 self-identified poets, of which a core 50 actively perform.
By virtue of his abilities at Web design, Francis has become director of the organization. He’s compiled extensive listings of events along with profiles of 25 local poets and samples of their work at http://www.albanypoets.com.
“We’re trying to make the Web just a part of what we do,” he says. Already the group has started the annual Albany Word Fest, which will return in September.
On Tuesday at the Bayou Cafe on Albany’s North Pearl Street, the organization will inaugurate Project: Slam, Albany’s first monthly poetry slam. (The launch was in fact scheduled for March 16, but a snowstorm slammed the city before the poets could, and the event was canceled; only a handful of people all members of the Albany Poets board showed up.)
Serving as slam master'' will be Dain Brammage, who hopes the event willget people to come in and watch poetry.”
In addition to eliciting a style of writing and reciting more akin to rap, slams also have strict rules on performance length, and poets are subjected to being scored by judges drawn from the audience. “A slam should be more than (just) reading something,” says Brammage.
While a slam might be a step toward larger audiences, poetry still seems to be an art form not endangered by the commercial mainstream.
I see poetry as an honest transmission, the last true voice in a commercial age,'' says Engelhardt, the School of Night” host who’s been a part of the scene for 11 years and founded Albany Poets Inc. “The poet’s voice is something that needs to be rediscovered.”
” The Last True Voice in A Commercial Age“
It seems quite possible, now in the age of social media that that statement is true. The city of Albany NY was once full of dozens of poetry open mics & readings in the Generation X era when in the 1990s & the early 2000s a true poetry rennisance was happening all over the United States. In Albany there were poetry readings at different venues every month and almost every day of the week. It was an amazing time with new poets & and new forms of poetry coming to the forefront. It was an amazing time to be a writer or a poet at fully packed readings where free expression was a variety of diverse performers and a diverse crowd. From the late 1980s legendary Monday night Poets Open Mic at the punk rock club at the Qe2 to the MadDog Midnight reading at the Changing Spaces Art Gallery our city once had a poetry scene unlike no other supported by the group Albany Poets, one of the first online poetry sites in the nation which shared news on poetry & poetry events founded by myself & Thom Francis in 1999. Albany Poets is now a part of The Hudson Valley Writers Guild but back in our early days we were not a part of any academic institution or guild. We created something new, original and amazing that pushed the poetry scene to a new level. We even had the annual AlbanyWordFest once a year which brought poets from allover to come and share their voices. Albany Poets & the Albany Poetry scene were what the spirit of the Spoken Word was truly all about . The energy of all those poets and all those words. The voices that were meant to be heard.
In the late 1990s & into the early part of this century I created and ran a spoken word poetry open mic called THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT at a rock club called Valentine’s as well as at a few other locations afterwards in Albany, NY over the years. The open mic was always extremely crowded and popular and we did alot of themed nights also such as Beat Generation Night, the Poe Halloween Benefits, Bukowski Night and some other cool and unique evenings before alot of these ideas took hold in other places. But as all good things my SON had a predecessor. The original group of poets in the time of Marlowe, Raleigh & Shakespeare. Hence the name. Eventually, in the last few recent years the Albany scene has dried up and the only poetry readings are now mostly staged with academic poets and by academic institutions without any open mics open to the public to share their work. It’s very sad really. Very heartbreaking.
Last year I created a new Poetry Open Mic called INVOCATION held monthly at the Lark Hall music venue on the corner of Hudson & Lark which received a good amount of attention and became the new center for Albany poetry. But our reading space is currently under construction and we hope to begin the open mic with featured poets and return soon.
We once had a saying. It became a truth:
Poetry Lives In Albany NY!
But the only way something thrives and becomes a true moving force is by supporting it and keeping the flame alive so that others may find out what it feels like to step up upon a stage and share their work. Poetry isn’t about just a few selected poets from out of town reading and passing through.
POETRY IS ALIVE and it’s for EVERYONE.
STILL.
~ R.M. Engelhardt 08/28/23
R.M. ENGELHARDT 
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