When you organize a poetry reading, your primary goal should be to build a poetry community. More than anything else a poetry reading is great way to bring poetry lovers into the same space to meet. Every step in the process of organizing your reading should reach out and invite.
1. Find a performance space. Bookstores, cafes (may be noisy), and College campuses are traditional. Nontraditional spaces like warehouses or homes are fine if centrally located and easy to find. Business owners and Managers are often overjoyed to host. Just ask.
2. Decide: will it be open mic or have a featured poet or both. Most professional poets will not share the stage with amateurs.
i. If you want to host professionals, a bookstore or University is the way to go. Poets read at bookstores to promote their books, not for pay. When they read elsewhere, they command a fee. If your local University can get a grant, a professional reading series can be a great way to reach the national poetry community. Contact poets through their publisher’s marketing departments.
ii. Otherwise, an open mic or a featured local poet with an open mic is the way to go. Be prepared for egomaniac. You will have to set rules to prevent the self-absorbed from hogging the mic or noisily coming and going while others read.
3. Decide also whether this will be a series or a onetime event. Series have a greater chance of success as word of mouth has time to build. Be sure to make times and dates predictable, for instance, every Friday night.
4. Promote your reading with flyers. They are easy to make in MS Word. Download a press release template from Microsoft Office online and deliver it to all local publications that publish calendars of events. Create a Facebook event page and invite all of your contacts.
5. Show up early with your equipment. If you have teamed with a business, they may have a microphone, podium, and chairs. Otherwise, you will have to rent or scrounge from friends. The readers will need water. The audience might like snacks (nothing noisy and you might want to put them away once the reading starts to prevent distracting grazing.
6. Start it off.
a. If you have a featured reader, introduce him or her: just some facts and light flattery. Don’t quote or read the poet’s or anyone’s poems.
b. If you have an open mic, order is all! Have your readers sign up or select their order according to seating. Introductions bore; have each reader call the next on the list.
7. Thoroughly enjoy the poems.
8. After, thank the reader(s), remind everyone of future readings, and be certain to mention if there are books for sale at the event. Clear up the space and meet your poets for an after-reading coffee or cocktail.
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