A Review: Nuyorican Poets Cafe Hosting Online Open Mic
Nuyorican Poets Cafe hosts open mics online every week by Advocate of Wordz for free to expand and sustain a poetry community. The poetry I found in the open mic was experimental and poetry that has been practiced over a long period of time. It was very refreshing to hear both kinds of poems because of how important both styles of experimental and practiced poetry is. Every poet had approximately 3 to 5 minutes to perform their poem or poems. Having an online open mic at 8pm at night increased the social and literary interactions between people.
This also challenges the reader like myself to hear more poetry that I haven’t heard or read before. It is very much like traveling to a new place we have never been before when we have new content to read. Poets and readers can get very bored of content when something has become too repetitive and not having a specialization or studied writing style can make it harder for poets and readers to understand the language presented.
The most practiced poems were when I heard people describe their own unsettling experiences in free verse poetry. The most experimental poetry I heard was when they talked about themes of another person they despise or miss in free verse. The more common poetry heard was definitely hearing people’s troubling experiences in free verse. Poets were very open when describing their poem, whether it was about a bad break up or sexual assault. They also took on questions if they had extra time. People also commented in the chat or snapped fingers and clapped if they really liked a poem. There are of course sometimes competitive people in artistic atmospheres, but the majority of people were welcoming at the open mic. It’s really meant to be a place where people can share their poetry and participate in the literary community so it can be consistently active. It’s not meant to be a chaotic environment, but sometimes open mics can get a little ‘crazy’ for the lack of better words. The only major difference from an online experience and an in-person experience is that you get to witness a more performative performance in an in-person open mic but there is a lot more accessibility for poets and readers to have a free open mic online.
This is great for new poets to market their poems or books. It helps them get their book or website out there more when they can interact with a live audience curious about what someone has to say. It is also a great way for the poets to practice performing readings or public speeches. This is again, free for poets to participate in. It is also good in the fact that they are getting different audience members that they are not used to seeing.
It’s a great place for someone to start going to open mics if they have never been to an open mic to get a better feel of what it is, especially due to the fact that it is online and free. You also don’t have to show your camera, obviously, but you shouldn’t feel pressured into putting your camera on, you are the audience. They have free open mics on Monday and Wednesday at 8pm, and on Thursday they have free open mics at 9pm.