City’s poets gather for memorable community event

CITY HALL — The 2nd Annual Poems under the Dome, a celebration of San Francisco open mic poetry, took place Monday, April 30th at City Hall in the North Light Court. The event celebrated National Poetry Month, made possible by the Mayor, the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Public Library.

The event captured the authentic spirit of the San Francisco open mic scene by opening the reading to the public, where nearly 200 people attended. More than 50 poets contributed a single favorite poem of their own in what was claimed by the event’s organizers as San Francisco’s largest open mic poetry reading.

Poems Under the Dome 2007 kicked off with an opening blessing by performer Jorge Molina, who gathered all spoken word enthusiasts beneath the City Hall dome for the ceremony. Moving to the North Light Court, the readings began with about 24 open mic participants, who were recruited before the event from the city’s most popular weekly and monthly reading venues. Each of these poets had won a reading slot through event host and poet wrangler E.K. Keith.

According to one poet, the public event became symbolic of the personal drive in everyone in the community who wants to be heard. “The spirit of poetry here is reaching out for community development by having us all come together,” said Beat Museum Reading poet Julie Townsley, who read at the event. “Our movement is a free one, addressing the need to speak out and be heard.”

To other open mic performers it was an opportunity to be part of a memorable moment of a movement on the rise. “This event includes a great body of poets, artists and others willing to pay a great tribute to creativity with an event that is still evolving,” said local poet Bob Booker.

Poems under the Dome is the brainchild of Diamond Dave Whitaker, a poet from the beat generation. Diamond Dave hosted the event, offering the crowd a notorious mix of free expression of political and cultural ideas while encouraging a forum for speaking out freely on underground, queer, and feminist issues that reflected the concerns of the community.

For more information on this event, visit poemdome.com.

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All photos by J. Evert Winburn unless otherwise noted. Copyright (C) 2007 Word Art Salon / SF, www.wordartsalon.com. All rights reserved.