Searching Out Culture.

I’ve been trying to take advantage of cultural enrichment opportunities lately. As my friend (slash my friend’s mom) Jeanne said earlier this year, there are cool things that happen in Maine, but you really have to seek them out. They don’t just magically appear in your own town at regular intervals. You kinda have to look for them and keep your finger on the pulse to know what’s coming up.

It’s sometimes surprising what all opportunities there are for things even in sleepy little Maine if you just watch for them. For instance, one day in February I saw on Instagram that a poet I like, Rudy Francisco, was landing in Portland, Maine. I was like “whaaaat?!?!” And then I looked at his events page and found out he was doing an event at Bates College that night. So I headed over there to see it! Rudy was actually on the Tonight Show recently and performed a spoken word poem that I really loved. You can watch that performance below. (I also recorded it when I saw it live, but I missed the beginning of the poem, so I figured I’d post the Tonight Show version.)

Then I saw that another poet I follow on Instagram, Olivia Gatwood, added a Maine tour stop, so I looked into that and found out she was doing an event at Colby College for Women’s History Month on Saturday night. I headed up to Colby for that, too, which was really fun. I already had a copy of Olivia's book of poems and had read it, so it was fun to see her perform them live. Here's a video of her performing a poem that I really like.

And I also found out that Andrea Gibson is going to be doing an event in Portland in May, which I’m going to try my best to get to. Andrea Gibson is even FROM Calais, Maine! Though they live in Colorado now and have for years. They are heralded as one of the leaders of the modern spoken-word poetry movement, which is really really cool.

I went to a poetry reading in college once, and thought it was kiiiiinda boring? But poets reading their written work aloud is nothing like poems that were intended for live performance. Spoken word poetry, while probably not something I’ll ever do myself, is really really really cool to go to. If you ever get a chance, I would highly recommend that you go to a spoken word poetry event.

And, because I love you all, here's another video of a spoken word poem (By the aforementioned Olivia Gatwood along with Megan Fally) that's really great. Enjoy!