Poets & Writers
The Poetry Brothel: Postcard From New York City
On a sultry Friday night, amid the thumping bass notes from cruising cars and the occasional thunder of the elevated J train, a wonderfully distinctive literary event took place in the dim white rooms of a studio space in northeast Brooklyn. Unique to New York City—in the United States, at least; a doppelganger did exist for a time during a U.K. festival—the Poetry Brothel has been gaining the attention of a growing crowd of poetry fans looking for a little nightlife. On July 25, the brothel held its sixth evening of literary seduction against a backdrop of coiling music, flickering candlelight, and drapes of jacquard and brocade. Poets in character completed the scene, their off-hours identities half-concealed behind garlands of peacock plumes and wigs, brass-buttoned coats, and dandy boots so pointy they could scale fish. But the hefty carat behind all the trash-velvet display was poetry.
“We want your bodies beside us, your ears’ love, and those tiniest hairs on the back of your necks,” the organizers wrote in a perfumed press release tucked inside a cigar box. “We will reach for them with our voices.” The reading series-cum-literary theater is the brainchild of Stephanie Berger (AKA the Madame) and fellow New School MFA graduate Nicholas Adamski (stage name Tennessee Pink), who dreamed up the brothel during a late-night conversation about a year ago. “Sometimes poetry is better one on one,” Adamski says. “We thought, ‘There are probably people who want to have poems read to them like this,’ so we decided to make that possible.” Since January, the two, along with a collection of friends and volunteers, have brought the monthly event to various venues in Manhattan, and now Brooklyn.
UPCOMING:
Event Info Host: Patricia Smith
Type: Music/Arts - Performance
Time and Place Start Time: Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 9:00pm
End Time: Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 2:00am
Location: The Zipper Factory
Street: 336 W. 37th St @ 8th Ave.
City/Town: New York, NY
FROM THE POET:
I've tried to figure out a way to describe this without stunning the magic. It's joyous, luscious, warm and literary.
$15 gets you in with a free drink and free private private poetry reading with your very own poetry whore!
Contact Info
Email: thepoetrybrothel@gmail.com
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