Event Recap and Photos from our Untitled Open Mic ft Chris Ashley | 09.21.22

The open mic just seems to keep getting better as we have a core of regulars bringing in new pieces all the time, as well a number of newbies who get that enthusiastic “Please Come Back!” chant. Zach gave us a Halloween preview with a rhymed narrative poem, “Scary Stories from Santa,” and Jacquie defined irony by beginning with, “I don’t think I’m a poet anymore,” and then knocking us out with lines like, “the silence that needs writing.” We had an assortment of love poems (aren’t all poems love poems?) of various kinds, with Annah talking about self love (“Be the person you love before someone come in”), Max about betrayal (“just another friend sitting in red sauce”), Connor G about confusion (“like Cupid is shooting all his arrows in the dark”), and Mike Regan telling us to shoot for the stars but expect dumb luck to prevail. Ricky closed out the open with “Poems I Can Write at the Office,” an example we can all emulate when the going is slowing.

Then we had our first (certainly not our last, we hope) feature, from Chris Ashley, with a lot of love poems delivered in a take-no-prisoners style. Chris is that rare combination of dead-honest delivery and intricate wordsmithing that knocks your socks off, and most of us were wiggling our barefoot toes by the end. The power of the performance was remarkable, considering how short a time Chris has been writing and performing, having come to Untitled only a couple of months ago, and only having done a few open mics in the Orlando area, which was home before coming north recently. As was said earlier, we hope to hear more.

Text Credit - Douglas Bishop

Photo Credit - Ricky Orng