Downtown Riverhead took a double hit Sunday as the Blue Duck Bakery and Café closed its doors for the last time. The bakery has hosted Poetry Street, a group of poets who have gathered in the cafe for monthly open mic readings. Ironically Sunday was the group’s fifth anniversary, so emotions ran high along the spectrum from sorrow to celebration.
Bakery owner Nancy Kouris fought back tears as she addressed the poets and standing-room only audience.
“Making the decision to close the shop was a tough one, and all I kept thinking about was, ‘but what about Poetry Street?’ Please know that your voices are embedded in the walls and in the beautiful tin ceiling for the next owner. Poetry Street will live on.”
Poetry Street was started by Susan Dingle and Robert ‘Bubbie’ Brown in 2014 as part of East End Arts’ JumpstART program. Dingle, a ruling elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Southold, and Brown of the First Baptist Church in Riverhead created Poetry Street as “an ecumenical social justice ministry, the ‘room without a roof’ where every voice is heard.”
Introduced to each other by Marjorie Day, Dingle and Brown believed that poetry could bring disparate community members together. According to Dingle the underlying theme of Poetry Street was to make a safe place listen to others who “don’t look just like you, and to foster diversity and recovery.”
Day attended the fifth anniversary celebration and was honored as the “godmother of Poetry Street” for her role in bringing Dingle and Brown together. Day said “everyone should know their history — the story of their people. I believe there’s a connection between knowing your story and poetry.”
About a dozen poets recited their works including featured poets Diane Giardi of East End Arts, mother and daughter Vivett Dukes and Cereta Newton and immediate past poet laureate of Suffolk County Gladys Henderson. Many of the other poets were regulars at the mic and there was a distinct air of camaraderie among them. In past sessions poets have come from as far away as Boston and Washington, D.C.
Topics ranged from the lighthearted to the razor-sharp dissection of social and cultural issues. From intensely personal to general observations, the audience heard about how “My Little Garden” sustained a child growing up in post-war Europe when “there wasn’t enough to eat;” to an angry sister screaming at her sibling’s cancer to “GET OUT!” — about how inhabitants of gated communities are insulated from the trouble of the “brown people who maintain them.” Martha Stewart appeared in two poems, one a whimsical muse of having a Stewart-inspired “DIY Summer” and the other spotlighting the unfairness of Stewart spending months in jail for insider trading while Wall Street bankers got billions in bailouts for “crashing the world’s economy.” There were themes of rape, drug addiction, abusive boyfriends, organ donation, the wisdom of grandmas and a passionate plea for young black men to “step up to the plate and do the right thing despite the burdens that have been placed on them by society.”
Perhaps Steven Kramer, a long-time member of the group, said it best: “Poetry is examining simple events and finding they’re maybe not so simple after all.”
Poetry Street will go on, said Dingle as she presented a proclamation to Kouris for her support, imagination and generosity in giving Poetry Street its first home.
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