People filled the corridor-like room of Flagstaff Brewing Company, and one by one, they took to the mic in the corner of the bar that held the attention of many. Words of peach trees, passion, birth, grief and the impact of poetry on one’s life flowed out of lips, through the mic and into the ears of all present. Lights flickered behind the readers while passersby gazed through the windows to catch sight of the performances. At the end of each reading, the sounds of clapping and cheering overtook the room.
This was the scene at the Poet Brews open mic on Dec. 12, where poets and writers gathered to read their work at Flag Brew. Margarita Cruz is the founder and host of Poet Brews and has been running the open mic every Tuesday night since she started it in March.
Cruz is an NAU English adjunct professor, president of the Northern Arizona Book Festival and the marketing and event coordinator at Bookmans Entertainment Exchange. She said she started Poet Brews because she missed having weekly writer events that were more prevalent before the pandemic. As a previous employee at Flag Brew, Cruz reached out to the event coordinator about holding the open mic at the bar and began creating flyers and informing people in her communities about the new event.
“I really found that there was such a strange, really, really exciting literature landscape up here,” Cruz said. “My landlord was a poet and my mentors were poets and writers and fiction writers, and I just felt like the literary community was so open and so intimate in sharing stories and accepting one another that I just wanted to make someone else feel like that.”
Since March, the mic at Flag Brew has opened at 7 p.m. each Tuesday for Poet Brews, and while “poet” is in the event title, participants are free to read any written work. Past performances have included reading letters and last-minute writing on cocktail napkins, with readers ranging from published writers to first-time poets.
Click here for more information.
Links:
