Join us to listen to some poetry—or share some writing of your own—at Poetry in the Boro at Dapper Owl on Sunday evening, October 20. We’ll be having a double feature with JR Robles and Aaron Shapiro, who will be sharing their work and talking about their recent experience as ArtWire fellows in the 23-24 season. Art Wire is an ongoing creative writing collaboration between OZ Arts and The Porch in Nashville. Read more about JR and Aaron below.
The features will be at 6:00, with open mic to follow. Drip coffee and light snacks will be available at no charge. However, we hope that you’ll order from Dapper Owl’s tasty menu to help make this a winning collaboration for all of us! Their menu includes coffee, tea, beer, cider, and baked goods.
About the open mic
Open mic readers can share poetry or spoken word: 2 poems or four minutes, whichever comes first. Reading a favorite poem by another writer is fine, too. Sign up for the open mic on site.
We always ask that readers be prepared to keep their pieces “PG-13” depending on our venue and audience, which sometimes includes younger people.
The Dapper Owl coffee pub is located at 2412 East Main St. just past its intersection with Rutherford Blvd., on the east side of the MTSU campus. Overflow parking is on the Arnold Lane side of the building – pull in straight toward the building to allow more cars to fit (careful of the AC unit!) or park on the side of road down Arnold Lane (please don’t block any driveways).
About our features
JR Robles is an actor, writer, and filmmaker based in Nashville. Recent stage credits include Crybully and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime with Nashville Repertory Theatre, Kindling Arts’ A Very Special Holiday Special, and The Cackleberry County Fair. Recent film and television credits include Queen of the Ring, Funny How, and Hollywood Adjacent. He is also co-producer for the Dare to Fail Short Film Showcase, as well as a co-creator of DTF! TV: A Sketch Comedy Show. As a writer, he is a 2023-2024 Oz Arts ArtWire Fellow, and was a finalist for the Porch Prize in creative nonfiction.
Aaron Herschel Shapiro lives in Murfreesboro, where he teaches courses in writing, literature, and Jewish Studies with the English Department of Middle Tennessee State University. He is a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, the Paul Muldoon Poetry Fellowship, and the William R. Wolfe Award, and his work has appeared in Mesmer, Dream Geographies, and Reckoning: Tennessee Writers on 2020. He is also a 2023-2024 Oz Arts ArtWire Fellow.
Challenge words
Here are our challenge words, chosen by our community at our last gathering. If you like, write a new piece to share that includes one, some, or ALL of these words:
bingo | breathe | float | ruminate | mining | arrested | birthday | dissonance | carve | run
Your donations are appreciated
ADMISSION IS FREE. A DONATION of $5 is appreciated to help us offset our costs. You can donate using PayPal at paypal.me/poetryintheboro. We also accept donations on site.
Poetry in the Boro thanks MTSU Write and the Rutherford Arts Alliance for their on-going partnerships and support.