Hippo Manchester
November 24, 2005

Pop Culture: Not quite Def, but still a jam

A poetry scene returns to Manchester with a weekly open mic night at Bridge Street Café

By Bill Copeland   news@hippopress.com

Truth can be stranger than fiction and even more surreal than poetry.

A writer who has been living in Manchester less than a month has organized a weekly poetry reading at Bridge Café, 1117 Elm St. Chris Keefe, formerly of Florida by way of Hampton Beach, said his first night was a rousing success.

“Some of your readers may have heard of the HBO Def Poetry,” Keefe said. “It’s basically just like that. Friday was the first night of it. We had 35 people, 22 performed. You just go up there. Read whatever you want to read and people will ask you questions. It’s interactive.”

The first night’s event (held Nov. 11) featured poetry about politics as well as poems about dreams and there were also some comedians who performed. Keefe hit the ground running.

“I pulled into Manchester two weeks ago and got everything situated and started up and got so many people to show up in basically like a week,” he said.

Keefe has no previous experience organizing or promoting events. However, he has received over 150 e-mails from people who have seen fliers he has put up around town.

“I think next week this thing is going to be even bigger,” Keefe said. “Manchester’s been missing something like this for a long time. They’ve been waiting for it. I think within the next week or two I’m maybe going to have to find a bigger venue to hold it. I’ve got a project working with the New Hampshire Institute of Arts with their students involved with this.”

Keefe said he wants to start poetry slams at local colleges. Keefe described these slams as a tournament in which four people go up and read their poetry. Whoever the audience chooses goes on to the next challenge.

“There’s four groups of four people, so 16 total. There’s going to be four winners out of those groups, and then it’s going on to four to two to one,” the poet said.

Keefe presents his poetry meetings and will present his slams under the name Spoken Word Productions.

“I needed something people would look at and be like, ‘Oh, OK.’ Eventually, I’d like to have a production company called Spoken Word Productions, but I just needed something that will catch people’s eyes.”