More than six years later, we are still doing the salon. It isn’t every week, or even every month, but it is still going. If you have been around for… a few decades…(yikes) you know that things come and go. Presses start, readings start, open mics and festivals start and stop. Things go out of print, venues close, new people pop up and start things. This is how it goes.
I have started presses, reading series, festivals, zine swaps, writing groups, art meet ups… things happen. And that’s ok.
We all tend to think a few things: We are the first to do whatever it is, or the first to have the idea. We will do it forever. We will not make the mistakes, we will have a better format, we will not do this thing or that thing. We love it enough or are committed enough that we won’t let life or health or finances or travel barriers or closed venues or drama or housing or work or employment instability or ANYTHING stop us. Such is the hubris of the organizer, not yet humbled by whatever is hiding behind the bushes. I have had this hubris, too. We kept Full of Crow press running for a long time and it was so close to my heart that I still pay for the domains because it hurts to fully close the door. But, close we must.
The Lehigh Valley Poetry Virtual Salon started when the world shut down for covid, and our local open mics and workshops and poetry events were in limbo. Many of the area reading series had ended, and new events like the zine swaps and barters fizzled out. We were becoming increasingly involved with the Easton Book Festival and were hosting events like Wicked Brew and Words in the Ward. Almost overnight, we found ourselves indoors and adapting. People reached out to say that they were feeling isolated, missing third spaces, missing the community and consistent and stable community and connectedness that they had. One poet described it as having the rug pulled out from under the local scene that they had just gotten to know.
It goes without saying that people were coping with health issues, fear, barriers, economic challenges, loss of loved ones. Poetry was not at the top of the list in an emergency scenario. We were worried about our loved ones, our lives. Trying to figure out how to keep events and community going wasn’t an urgent need in the same way. I get that. I had a terminally ill parent who I was not allowed to visit and those were hard times. I wasn’t alone in being afraid, rattled, upside down, worried. When my job went completely virtual, I worried about work. I worried that we would all lose our incomes.
All of those things were real and valid and hard during that time. But something else was also true and valid: hearing from other poets and writers and artists helped me. Writing workshops helped me stay writing, and listening to others share in our weekly open mics and workshops helped me feel like this part of my life was still here. We learned and we did the best that we could.
There is nothing trivial about community. To say that it isn’t important when “more significant problems were present” is to have difficulty with understanding that all of these things can be true at the same time. To treat community as a luxury or a low priority can come from a place of privilege: just because you have a full table doesn’t mean that others do. Poetry can be something you do in a list of things, and a list of circles. But it can also be everything. Losing community and spaces is about far more than our art.
So Darrell Parry and I worked together to keep the virtual open mics and workshops and festival programs and meet ups going. We found that it actually worked for a lot of people, and the virtual option brought people to the open mic who were not able to participate before. The captions, audio options, ability to join from anywhere, even the anonymity of keeping the camera off- these were things that worked for some people. When we started to go outside again, we slowly regrouped. Some things were lost for good. Some new things started in their places. But we learned things about community from those virtual events. We learned that they had value and became about inclusion. An option, vs. a necessity.
So we are still doing it, at least four times a year and also during the Easton Book Festival. For now, we don’t have plans to stop hosting some events online.
E. Lynn Alexander
