Reading at Boogaloos Bar & Grill
Andy Brown reading a poem at Boogaloos Bar & Grill, Richmond Virginia Visited on June 17, 2019.
Joanna Lee is a driving force behind the writing community in Richmond. She does a great job of organizing events, including open mics, at different venues across the city. I particularly enjoy the open mic at Boogaloos. It’s an intimate space to have a reading. Because most of what I’m writing and reading these days are poems in the form of toasts or anti-toasts, it adds a little something extra when people have a drink in their hand. When I get to the “raise your glass” parts of the toasts, people can actually raise a glass.
The “occasional” aspect of the poems is why I started writing the in first place. I’ve been interested in the forms that poems take when they’re part of public events, rituals, and so on. Similarly, how poetry emerges in everyday life, in the form of aphorisms, anecdotes, “common sense,” etc.
But what I also like about reading at Boogaloos is that the audience isn’t precious about obscenity or sex. They also have a sense of humor. In other, more formal, staid venues, I will read “A Toast to New Moles on Old Bodies” but not “A Toast to Your One Night Stand” or “A Tale of Angel Voyeurs,” which ends with this little gem:
May your oysters always be shucked.
May your chickens always be plucked.
May the sun always rise
Between your damp thighs
After a mind-blowing fuck.