The cover of Never Ending Poetry.
On the last page of the new poetry anthology Never Ending Poetry — a celebration of the first year of Open Mic Surgery, the poetry reading series that happens almost every Tuesday at Never Ending Books on State Street — there’s an incisive poem by Alice Prael about a barrel in a field on fire, melting plastic. “Polymers propagating / intimate inanity / inane intimacy,” she writes. “It’s poison but it’s warm.” On the same page is a poem called “Ode to Baby Jesus” by Julie Meehan. “You’ll get nailed down,” she writes, “but you’ll get up again / They’re never gunna nail you down.”
The juxtaposition is just fine by Brian Robinson, who runs Open Mic Surgery and put together the anthology. “I love that one poem is a beautiful, really elegant” piece, “and then the last poem is an adaptation of a Chumbawumba song about Jesus,” Robinson said. To him, “that’s the dichotomy” of Open Mic Surgery itself. “Nothing is off the table.”
Robinson started Open Mic Surgery in July 2022 with the idea of creating a place for poets both new and seasoned to try their poems out in front of an audience, meet like-minded writers, and hear what other people were writing. By January he felt attendance was consistent and robust enough that he could start inviting featured readers from outside New Haven. He also started doing themed readings. A Valentine’s Day reading was “hugely successful,” he said. A May Day reading followed. He’s planning a Halloween-themed reading, as the day itself falls on a Tuesday.
As Open Mic Surgery’s first anniversary approached, he hit on the idea of an anthology, to show that “this really happened.… I think we’re doing something really special at the reading, and I wanted other people to have witness of it,” he said. “I’m a big fan of having a document of something.”
Robinson felt up to the task of putting together an anthology after making a chapbook for the poetry series for Valentine’s Day. “I made my first chapbook ever,” he said. “I’m 48 years old and I’d never made a chapbook, even though I’d been writing poetry since I was in high school. So I made one” — of his bad poems from high school — “and gave them out for free, because I thought it would be funny, my melodramatic nonsense.” The joke worked, but the idea of making a bigger volume remained.
In June, Robinson put out a call for an anthology. “Every single featured poet came back with their poems, and I had about 15 other poets.” The only criterion for submitting a poem was that the author had to have come to a reading. “I let people self-select” what poems they wanted to submit.
He got the funny, the light, the heartbreaking, and the sublime in equal measure. There was Sophia Arnaout’s poem about her relationship with her mother, and a time she gave her a plum: “I want to swallow the pit and grow / a tree in my stomach, its branches / gripping onto my organs / like my mother cradling me.” There was Tom Ndiaye’s poem that began “some day / you will loathe / your favorite band t‑shirt / because you were examining / a stain on it / when the doctor called / to reveal their diagnosis.” There was Elisabeth Kennedy’s poem about a bad date in 1987, rhapsodizing first about the dress she wore and ending with the chopped up lines: “As for him , I wonder now — / who? / who invited you? / you entitled fuck.” There was Mirilla Zhu’s poem that began “I am not currently religious, but / at age 40, I will probably / have a midlife crisis / and read the Brothers Karamazov / (for the second time) / and feel compelled to believe / in God again.”
He realized he had about a 50-page book on his hands, and took the extra step of springing for perfect binding. He spent the summer laying the poems out, copyediting, and designing the cover. “I did it all myself, and that’s not a brag,” he said. “It’s mostly out of enthusiasm. I love doing things.” Beyond the anthology, one of those things is the reading series itself.
Brian Slattery Photo
Robinson.
Robinson is “very proud” of how Open Mic Surgery has developed over a year of Tuesdays. That begins with the range of poetry represented at the readings. “We get regular meter and rhymers. We get performative slam poetry. We get very free verse. It’s all over the place, and it’s great, because you also see that everybody has a way of using this medium in the ways they’re most comfortable with.”
He’s always “so pleased” when people who have never read before step up to the mic and “unleash this incredibly beautiful expression of words, and you’re really touched.” Creating an atmosphere in which people feel comfortable being vulnerable has been a priority from the beginning. “I like that it’s that welcoming and open. That was the kind of community I wanted to develop.”
His goals hearken back to his own past as a young poet and music student in New York City. “I started reading poetry because I started going to readings in bars, and reading for people at bars at open mics,” he said. He got into writing because it was “cheap. I just needed a Walgreen’s notebook and a pen, and I could sit at a diner in the ’90s and have a cup of coffee and write a poem. That was all it cost.”
“I measured the success of a poem based on the response of the audience,” he added, and “not just crowd pleasers. I wanted them to be engaged. It’s not a successful poem if someone doesn’t feel something. So I’m a little rough around the edges and not elegant all the time. I don’t think that’s always the point.”
“Vulnerability is the key to a good poem,” Robinson continued. “Admitting something in a poem that may not be complimentary to you is super-important.” It can help listeners work through their own complex thoughts. There’s catharsis and connection in learning that other people have such thoughts. “There’s nothing alien about thinking an awful thought or having a terrible experience,” he said, in a poet proclaiming that “I am naked and bare in this world, and I am muddling my way through it.”
Robinson is looking forward to the next full year of Open Mic Surgery. He plans to keep it at Never Ending Books, and to diversify his pool of featured writers. He’d like to attend more readings out of town and meet more people to connect them to the scene in New Haven. And perhaps, as next summer begins, to put out the call again, because “it’s book time,” and “let the community speak for itself.”
Above all, he wants to use Open Mic Surgery to encourage people to try poetry themselves for the first time. “You can totally go on this path, and just show up at a poetry reading, and say ‘I wrote this poem on my phone a couple weeks ago, here it is,’ and read it, and you’ve just made art. You’ve communicated to a whole room of people. I love that. It’s fantastic.”
To preorder Never Ending Poetry, fill out a Google form here. Robinson is taking preorders for the anthology through the months of September and October for a minimum suggested price of $10 each. Proceeds from the sale of this book will help with covering travel costs and meals for future featured poets. The next Open Mic Surgery is on Tuesday, Oct. 3.
