Shockoe Bottom winebar C’est Le Vin was been one of our longest running venues; we shared poetry here monthly starting May of 2011. Later on that same year, we were double-booked with local jazz group Super64, a happy accident that became the basis for the unique poetry & music event held on the first Thursday of every month (except during the pandemic, when our Poetry & Jazz nights went virtual) until late summer 2021.
The night was a mashup of performing arts, with poetry & live music interspersed and the additional dimension of offering improvisational musical backup to any poet who wished. (If you’ve never read your work aloud to live music, we encourage you to try it—it can be a very different experience than a straight-up reading!)
Slightly more formal than a run-of-the-mill open mic, poets were given the opportunity to share with the audience a “taste” of their work in five minutes or less.
river city poets 