The first ever Poetry Coffeehouse was held at the library on April 11, 2003. In celebration of National Poetry Month, the night was a huge success! With no sign-ups, it was a mystery to myself and the library staff how many students would come. We were excited and amazed when the line stretched long outside the door, totaling roughly one hundred and ten (110) students!

Publicity

I have to thank Dunn Middle School and St. Mary's School teachers, for the support and for really talking up this event with their students. I began by sending letters to the Language Art Departments at each school in early February to notify the teachers of the event and to begin to gain feedback. After having an encouraging meeting with the DMS Language Arts teachers, Donna and I were excited to really gear up for the event. The teachers even offered to give extra credit! St. Mary's English teacher Mr. Jay McGivney, was eager to help also and offered to help pass materials onto his students.
I created postcard sized fliers to hand out in the schools, and to leave stacks at the public and school libraries, using Microsoft Publisher. This was the major source of publicity. A brief press release was given to both the Salem Evening News and the Danvers Herald, two weeks before the events to be run until Friday, the 11th.
Publisher was used to create the fliers and the certificates of participation. Microsoft Word was used to create the raffle tickets, registration sheets, poetry lists, and thank you notes to contributing local businesses.
Luckily, I only encountered one small expense. We decided to print the postcard fliers on a thicker paper, so that they would be more noticeable and durable. The rest of the paper used was from the library, and copied on their machines. Doug was very generous to do some of the delivering to St. Mary's School, where Mr. McGivney was willing to do the distribution. The materials for DMS, was given to Nan, who works at both libraries to deliver to the teachers there.

The Event!

Kids began arriving around 6:30pm (doors opened at 7pm), and the long line outside started to form. Forty five students signed up to read their original poetry, or their favorite already published work. After registering, students went into the Gordon Room, grabbed some food, sat down with their friends and listened to "Cedar Lane Connection", a local Gordon College band.
We invited the first twenty two students to read their poems, calling them up in groups of five or six. My husband, Dave was the emcee. All of the poems were in good taste, and every adult in the room was impressed with the maturity and depth of many of the poems. The students were for the most part respectful, encouraging good listeners to all of their peers. I really give the kids credit for being brave enough to get up in front of over one hundred people and read their original works, which sometimes were very personal. Topics ranged from light to semi-dark, friendship to broken families and war.
For a brief intermission time, we called out the names of five of the ten raffle prize winners, drawing the names in front of the kids. Thank you to Jen for calling out the names and prizes. The prizes donated were a $5 gift certificate from Dunkin Donuts, 2- One topping Pizzas from Firehouse Pizza, 2- Small Cheese Pizzas from Rocco's House of Pizza, 1 gift certificate for a free pedicure at New Wave Salon, $10 gift certificate for Movieworks, a gift certificate for three free games at Sunnyside Bowladrome, and 3- $5 gift certificates to Goodies Ice Cream. The kids were excited about their chances to win, cheering for each winner and prize.
After intermission the second half of the poets read. This also went smoothly, but we did notice that towards the end the students seemed to be getting a little fidgety. We chose to break at the end of the readers and announce the last ten prizes. This gave the kids an opening to get up, move around a little and to get more snacks. We then offered that anyone who wanted to read a second poem could come up and do so. We had seven kids who came back up. The little break had refreshed the kids, and they listened attentively waiting for the band to come back up and close the evening.
The middle schoolers seemed to love the band. Many of them came up and thanked the guys for coming, and saying that they really enjoyed their music. Cedar Lane Connection made a big effort also to connect with the kids on their level.

Set-up

The room was set up facing the back corner, with tables scattered around the room. In the back corner, a "stage" area was designated for the band and also served as the platform from which the kids read their poetry. I hung Christmas lights around the room, to create atmosphere, using more in the stage area to illuminate the performers.
Refreshment tables were set up along the walls, out of the way of the tables. A table in the opposite corner from the stage, held poetry books of many genres geared to teens.

Problems

Thankfully, we didn't have any huge ones! The only things that I can see in hindsight, is that there should have been a little more order in the registration line. This was tough to get the kids to line up and be organized because of the bad weather outside; no one wanted to be waiting out in the rain, so they all were pushing to get inside. Next time that this is done, and it is nice weather I would suggest having the registration table right outside the lower entrance to the library so that the kids can wait in a line along the path and not crowd the entryway. But we can't control the weather, so we do the best we can! We didn't really know what to expect for numbers so, refreshments could have been a huge problem. Luckily, we had enough food and the students seemed to be happy with the snacks. It would have been better if we had provided more cold drinks it seemed, as the lemonade set out went very quickly. Not bad, to have such small problems for such a big event!

Refreshments

I was given $100 dollars to spend on the refreshments ($50 dollars was part of the $200 gift from the Friends of the Library, and $50 from the Library). We ended up spending almost all of it. Blackberry Bakery was so generous to donate 4 dozen brownies, but we had to purchase cookies, mini muffins, snack mix, candy and drinks from Martha's Bread Basket and BJ' Wholesale. Myopia Hunt Club in Hamilton donated the lemonade and the use of one of the big drink coolers to serve it in. We also served coffee and hot chocolate, along with providing the sugar and milk. I want to thank Donna Maturi and Dane Cunningham for making sure that there were always plenty of drinks ready and available for the students. Bowls of candy were placed on the individual tables for the students to munch on as they listened.

Positive Outcomes

It was great to see so many kids come out on a Friday night to read and listen to poetry. We never even imagined this great of a turnout; it was so encouraging and rewarding for all of the hard work. It is also very encouraging to see so many of the teachers from DMS and St. Mary's come to support the students and the event. I think that this will be the beginnings of a great bridge between the Middle Schools and our Library. Donna has also noted that since the event, there have been many now familiar faces showing up in the Homework Center after school. This is something that we hoped for as a library, that the event would remind the students that the library is an accessible and comfortable place to be. We hope to see more evidence of this in the future!

Thank You's

Thank you most of all to Donna Maturi and Doug Rendell, who helped me brainstorm and get started on this wonderful event. It was Donna's idea in the first place, and she let me run with it! I could not have done it without her support!
Thank you to all of the librarians for making sure that people noticed my fliers by the circulation desks, but most of all thank you to Jen and Tricia for coming to help out with the event. We really appreciated the extra hands!
Thank you to all of the Dunn Middle School Language Arts staff, especially Ann Distasio, the school librarian. It was so great to have you as the bridge to the teachers and an extra source of publicity over there. We really appreciated your help in planning and promoting the event. It was great to see you all there too! Thank you to St. Mary's teacher Jay McGivney also in promoting the event there, and for really being a presence in enforcing the well behaved students at the event.
Thank you to Haverhill YA librarian Beth Galloway, for all of the paperwork and helpful information that you graciously sent to me. It was unbelievable and really gave me a place to start! Thank you to the band, Cedar Lane Connection for coming to play for the event. You really were a perfect fit for the evening!
Thank you to Dave Ambrose, Dane Cunningham and Bethany Cotnoir for giving up their Friday night to volunteer!
It was great evening, which must be repeated again!