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, July 26, 2026. Chattanooga poet Rachel Landrum Crumble will be our feature. Read more about Rachel below.
Our program starts at 6:00, with open mic following the feature. Drip coffee and light nibbles are 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, chips, and baked goods both sweet and savory.
Our new anthology is available for sale at our events! $20 cash or Venmo preferred; PayPal also accepted. You can also order online here for direct shipping to your address.
About the open mic – please note important changes this July!
We are experimenting with a few changes to our open mic this summer so that we can continue to hear from lots of you but we don’t feel quite as rushed. This month, our changes include:
Time/poem limit of 1 poem or 3 minutes, whichever comes first
- We welcome all styles of poetry and spoken word, and reading a favorite poem by another writer is fine, too. We ask that you be prepared to keep your pieces “PG-13,” as our audience often includes younger people. If your piece is over a page in length, PLEASE TIME YOURSELF AT HOME.
Sign up for the open mic on site anytime from 5:30 to 6:00 PM
- Doors open at 5:30. No early admittance. Signups will remain open until 6:00 PM.
- While signups will be open til 6:00, we recommend–and appreciate–that you arrive from 5:30 to 5:45 so that the Dapper Owl staff can take care of food and drink orders before we get our program started.
New this month: a lottery-style drawing for open mic slots
- At 6:00 PM, our team will put everyone registered for the open mic into a random number generator and draw 15-18 names. After the feature we’ll start announcing the open mic order. As always, we’ll have a break after the feature and about an hour of open mic after the break. Our goal is to be done by about 8:00 PM or so, with a few minutes to mingle afterward.
- We will continue to have a few slots specifically for first-timers to our mic.
- To state the obvious, the lottery means that arriving first no longer guarantees you an open mic slot. But it also means that you can arrive after 5:30 and still have a chance to read! We know you’re a community who understands–and demonstrates month after month–that your attention to one another is a gift.
- Please understand that the process stated above may change a bit. We appreciate your patience as we figure out a system that is as fair and straightforward as possible.
About our venue
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 perpendicular to 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 feature
Rachel Landrum Crumble is a life-long poet and retired teacher. She writes from a boots-on-the -ground faith perspective about depression and grief, family love, race and racism, empty nesting, faith and doubt. Sister Sorrow (Finishing Line Press 2022) was her first poetry book. In Praise of Detours (Main Street Rag 2025) is her second. She has an MFA from Vermont College. Over the course of her career, she has received scholarships to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Vermont College Post-Graduate Workshop, and Vermont Studio Center. and the 2025 GoodLit Writers’ Retreat for fiction. Find her on Instagram or Substack.
Challenge words
If you like, write a new piece to share that includes one, some, or ALL of these words, selected by our audience at our last gathering:
hawk | facade | toast | swelter | cantankerous | more | tartan | implement | toffee | discipline | advesperate * we think we recorded this suggestion correctly – but if we’ve got it wrong, let us know!
We rely on your donations
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.
More local lit events and news
- July 12 – The monthly Writers Mingle at Dapper Owl will be hosted by our own Gregory Lannom! Details here on the Rutherford Arts Alliance site.
- August 9 – August Writers Mingle, 3-5 pm at Dapper Owl, more details to come
- August 30 – Our Sunday evening reading and open mic will feature poet and spoken word artist, creative healer, and artist Kenny Rae, who was originally scheduled earlier this summer.
For more local lit events, check out the monthly Rutherford Arts Alliance lit-news blog by our team member Taffeta Chime!