Patricia Harrelson

Last night marked the one year anniversary of First Fridays, a monthly public reading event that my writing group hosts.  As always, the evening was a delightful mix of prose & poetry in various styles.  I left with a warm, glow, but when I got home, I found an email message that gave me pause for thought.

Last spring, a young women who lives about 100 miles away in another rural town contacted me because she was organizing a public reading, and she had some questions about our event (I’m listed as the contact person on our posters). Over the months, we’ve continued to correspond, and I’ve become kind of mentor for this gal. Last night she wrote with a concern:

This week I had two gay guys from Sacramento who read their poetry.  One guy read a poem about going away one weekend and the desk clerk says I’ll send someone over to make you feel better. Man prostitute shows up, and we get a play by play of “his” hands rubbing here and “his” hands caressing there and … well you get the idea.  I was very uncomfortable.  I wimped out and didn’t say anything, but I’m thinking my regulars are not going to return. What do I say to these guys next week? “Keep it clean” just doesn’t cover the problem. Have you faced this problem?

I didn’t respond right away in part because I haven’t encountered this particular problem but also because I felt the request deserved a thoughtful response. Here is what I wrote to this gal this morning:

I can’t say we’ve had quite this problem. The closest thing is when we get young rapper poets who use the “F ” word frequently and gratuitously in their work. I keep my eye on the audience and see a few cringes here and there, but my sense is the audience is clear that this is the reader’s lack of sensitivity to the beauty of language well used and that it in no way reflects the character of the event as a whole.

In a similar vein, public readings can attract readers whose major writing is in their journals into which they pour their hearts and souls. This work often has limited literary merit, and the audience simply grins and bears it. We once had a woman who had recently broken up with her boyfriend read melancholy or bitter poems.  It was painful to listen to and weird to clap after, but we did just that.

All this to say, hang in there. Maybe they won’t come back and if they do, your audience will know what to expect. Personally, I wouldn’t clap for such work, and maybe you can get others in the audience to boycott applause. A huge wave of silence can say more than words.

What advice would you offer this woman?