New Sunday Afternoon Poetry Series Begins November 7th in Elyria
Jim's Coffeehouse and Diner is located at 2 Kerstetter Way (formerly known as Lake Avenue) in downtown Elyria, just a few doors down from the East Falls River Walk, where you can catch a magnificent view of some of the Black River's renowned waterfalls. Maybe when the weather's nice we'll continue the poetry there when the coffee shop closes at 3. If you're interested in being a featured poet or performer, or just want more information, e-mail me at jc@crisischronicles.com. Meanwhile, I hope to see you every Sunday afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m. at Jim's Coffeehouse and Diner.
Peace and poetry,
John B.
I took these photos around Jim's on 8/21/2010
Posted by Jesus Crisis at 10/30/2010 8:03 AM 
Categories: Cleveland, Poetry Events, Elyria photos
Tags: Ohio Jim's Coffeehouse Poetry Jesus Crisis Elyria
Categories: Cleveland, Poetry Events, Elyria photos
Tags: Ohio Jim's Coffeehouse Poetry Jesus Crisis Elyria
Congrats to you and Dianne on have your third venue for poetry... you are a busy pair.
Now you can ride over on your bike if you want to.
Perhaps your record setting reading might be held there in time. Would be a nice thing for Elyria.
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I've been wanting to bring a reading to my home town for a while, but couldn't settle on the right venue for it. I also want to nurture a Lorain County poetry community. Lots of great writers here - and traditionally many have felt they had to travel to Cleveland or elsewhere to commune. I'm definitely keeping Jim's in mind for a 2nd annual Snoetry fest - but we have a couple other good options as well - so I'm still seeing how things sort themselves out before deciding.
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4 to 5 poetry readings in the same venue each month seems counter-intuitive for consistent turn-out. i have trouble with all the once-a-month readings as it is and cannot shoehorn all of them in each month.
still, i would be interested in reading (of course).
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You're right. Even having two Lix in a month at Bela Dubby seemed to decrease our per event attendance - but there were other factors involved in that - two dozen good readings going around Cleveland that week, including 4 or 5 on Wednesday and a big slam going on right down the street in Lakewood on Friday. In Cleveland, I would never do a weekly event looking for numbers - too many other events to contend with. But in Lorain County there are rarely any poetic events at all and we need some. I know I can't expect Clevelanders to come every week, though I'm sure we can drag some out from time to time with a savvy selection of features. Locals are gonna be the bread and butter of this series. There's no way to tell how many we'll get. But part of me is more interested in building a poetic community and raising the profile of poetry in general and Lorain County artists in particular than in racking up huge attendance numbers (though I won't neglect doing my best to bring people in - since it's not gonna be worth it for Jim's to host this unless they're selling more food and beverages as a result). Plus I'm tired of seeing local independent businesses fail around here. Hopefully it'll be good for me, good for them, and good for other poets/performers. It'll also allow me to give more up and comers an opportunity to feature - though I plan to bring in lots of the best art veterans (like yourselves) as well. I'd love to have you feature sometime. How soon are you interested in doing it?
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counter-intuitive for variety in the performances, but not for turn-out. cleveland has several weekly poetry events (writer's lounge on mondays, b-side lounge on tuesdays, soulful expressions on wednesdays...) and they all have a sizable base of attendees who are there each week.
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I tend to agree, though I'm gonna try to make it fertile for variety in the performances as well. I'm not quite sure what to expect. When the old, quite Christian ownership held an open mic at Jim's they used to get a nice sized crowd, but it was mostly Christian teen oriented, so poets like me were uncomfortable reading there more than once or twice. I want to broaden the horizons quite a bit. We'll see what happens. It's only a five minute walk from my house, so it'll be fun even if it's just a few of us reading to each other. But I'm gonna work toward having it be much more than that.
The good news is there's no regular poetry event on Sundays, as far as I know, within an hour radius of Elyria - the closest being at Smith's Coffeehouse in Sandusky once a month.
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That said, part of me relishes the idea of being counter-intuitive about it, hoping that I'm just thinking outside my own usual box of tuition and opening up to broader potential/possibilities.
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you're gettin' closer
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Starting in January, I'll be hosting a reading series at the Avon Lake Public Library, too.
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what do you do in your spare time
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Maybe he thinks about a girl he used to know...
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