The relaxing ambiance of the HUB fireplace lounge drew an intimate crowd to last Friday’s Open Mic, hosted by Poets and Writers. The evening began with a diverse mix of guitar and comedy acts. Among them was Billy Barth, who provided a nice change of energy for the crowd, which responded to his jokes with generous helpings of laughter.
“If we use quotations marks while speaking, why not make hand gestures to indicate parenthesis in what we are saying too? Or, maybe even an asterisk?” calmly joked Barth.
Barth later said, “My material comes to me at random. I think up whacky things in my day-to-day life and then try to adapt them to the stage.” This just goes to show that sometimes the best material can come when you least expect it.
Following Barth was Jacob Desmarais, who continued to feed off of the high energy of the crowd and performed two self-written songs titled “The Garden” and “Stuck.” The talent then switched from guitar and comedy to poetry readings in order to prepare the audience for the feature poet of the night.
The crowd could sense the emotion as the delivery of poetry became progressively more animated as the night continued. Patrick O’Sullivan kept the audience on their toes while he read a poem titled “Some Say,” after explaining that his writing was healing-inspired as he celebrated 6 years of being sober. His voice echoed through the HUB when he delivered his words with great passion and resonance.
Michael Eddy also shared two of his poems. A more serious one titled “March” followed by a more comical one titled “Digisex” which once again got the crowd laughing. Matt Richards then read some more serious poems, two of which he had written and then recited from memory, quite an impressive act to perform. These acts paved the way for Charles Xavier Lacerte, the featured poet of Open Mic night.
Lacerte does regular poetry readings in Manchester, and said he had been writing poetry since age 12. His experience was quite apparent as he began by reading several pieces from his book Just Collateral. His voice was loud and pronounced enough that he even opted to perform without a microphone. During the second half of his performance he read some poetry from his laptop that he had select audience members choose at random. This provided a diverse mix of subject matter ranging from his experiences in the army to relationships and family. Like some of the other poetry readers of the night, he kept the audience on their toes and provided a strong performance that rounded out an evening of great talent.
When asked where he drew most of his inspiration from for his writing, Lacerte jokingly said in response, “I become most inspired by shitty pop songs, horror movies, and LOL cats.”