February 11, 2016
By Cameron Hertzog
In a warm room off to the side, in a coffee house in downtown Bakersfield, poets stand in front their peers and speak the words they wrote of their feelings. On the first Friday of February, February 5th, Dagny’s, a local coffee shop located in downtown Bakersfield, hosted an open Mic poetry night.
Dagny’s at night
This event was part of First Friday that happens downtown the first Friday of every month. First Friday is a collaboration of businesses located in greater downtown Bakersfield area in an effort to get more people to take advantage of the beautiful space.
Dagny’s adds to this collaboration by hosting the Open Mic Night. Everyone is welcome to participate and it is suggested that you preform original works.
This week they had a featured poet, Liz Greynolds a student of Taft College, preform a collection of her pieces. Being a featured poet meant that Liz read a compilation of 10 pieces on topics that ranged from environmental issues and everyday things like light. “I am inspired by everything around me really . . . .” Liz says, still a little nervous after her performance. She apologized for seeming to be so nervous.
Liz Greynolds
Although Liz was the headliner, there were others who performed, poets from all over Bakersfield signed their names and read their original works. These poets, just like Liz, wrote about everything around them or themselves.
A man read one about cleaning out his fridge, but when by the end of the poem, the listener realizes he probably wasn’t talking about a fridge but rather himself. The room was packed wall to wall with bodies eager to hear all the spoken words and everyone clapped loudly after every performance.
After it was all done and the room had almost cleared out and cooled down, I asked Liz for an excerpt from her poems. “Hold on while I decide!” she said as she flipped through her book of carefully chosen words. “How long can it be?” She finally settled on two quotes.
“My lungs runneth empty but they can still go for a mile or two/
Thanks to the milk honey stomach country”
And
“It’s the season of love and nice jackets and tenderloin blue./
It’s the season of drones in our music and or skies-/
Suck me dry”
Powerful words from powerful poems. She was eager to share her work with me, all the poets seemed eager to share their work that night, and Dagny’s hosted an event that allowed these young and old artists to do just that, share their art in the form of poetry.
