Poetry Street, ‘where everyone has a voice,’ turns 10: Its founders and hosts reflect on the journey

What is poetry? Celebrated poets throughout the ages have mused upon the meaning of the word and the craft itself.  The only thing most have agreed about is the elusive nature of poetry’s definition and description. 

“Poetry is a human fundamental, like music,” poetry scholar Edward Hirsch wrote in “A Poet’s Glossary.” “It predates literacy and precedes prose in all literatures.  There has probably never been a culture without it, yet no one knows precisely what it is.”  

That compelling nature of this form of expression — this “human fundamental” — has been the lifeblood of Poetry Street, the Riverhead-based group that grew out of the East End Arts JumpstART program in 2014. The public art project was founded as a collaboration between Robert “Bubbie” Brown of Riverside and Susan Dingle of Southold, in partnership with Nancy Kouris of Blue Duck Bakery, which hosted the monthly Poetry Street readings and open mic sessions at her Riverhead bakery/café until it shut its doors in 2019.

In the 10 years since its founding, Poetry Street has grown into a flourishing community of poets and fans. It has survived and grown through the loss of two venues and the COVID pandemic. Like the art form itself, Poetry Street endures.

“There’s a rich, rich poetry population” in the Riverhead area, said Maggie Bloomfield, one of the program’s current coordinators. “Poetry is very big right now. It’s very popular and l think a lot of it has to do with Poetry Street. People came in the beginning, who had never read, who had no interest and got interested. They started writing, and they improved a lot and became regulars, even featured poets.”

Cofounders Brown and Dingle were introduced to each other by a mutual acquaintance, civil rights activist and East End resident Marjorie Day. They met to chat at the Blue Duck Bakery and Café in Riverhead.

Dingle and Brown believed that poetry could bring disparate community members together. The idea was to make a safe place to listen to others who “don’t look just like you, and to foster diversity and recovery,” Dingle said in a 2019 interview with RiverheadLOCAL.

The first Poetry Street event was held in June 2014, with the theme being Juneteenth, Dingle recalled last week, speaking via Zoom from Washington State, where she relocated in late 2020, following the death of her husband. 

She still participates in Poetry Street via Zoom. 

“Bubbie was our first featured poet” that day 10 years ago, Dingle said. The Poetry Street community kept growing, and it “happened so gradually and so naturally.” She and Brown knew “it just had to keep going” even after the JumpstART program ended. 

The lives of these two poets, who became fast friends through Poetry Street, followed different paths that led to their collaboration, though they have major things in common, such as a deep Christian faith — Dingle attended theological seminary and Brown is a deacon at First Baptist Church in Riverhead — and a passion for social justice.

Brown, who is retired from Brookhaven National Lab, has been writing poems since childhood. He took it up seriously as a senior in high school, he recalled, when his father died.

“That really rocked me,” he said. Writing poetry was “cathartic to me,” Brown said. It allowed him to release his emotions, and at the time, “I was in a place that was really, really bad.” 

“I think that writing those poems saved me from doing some other bad stuff that I was considering,” he said.

He never seriously considered publishing his poetry until the early 2000s, when his wife suggested it. He self-published a collection of poems. He’d never even considered reading his poetry publicly until then. The only poem he’d ever read publicly was a Christmas poem he wrote. He read it at his church. 

Yet today, despite being a prolific writer, a well-known local poet who reads his poetry at many different types of community events in many different places, Brown still does not consider himself a “real poet.”

“I’m a rhymer. I’m not a real poet,” Brown said in an interview Wednesday.

“Maggie and Susan, they are really poets,” he said, referring to Bloomfield and Dingle, both whom he clearly admires. “They write some serious, deep stuff. But most of mine is just rhymes.”

But Brown’s poetry — what he calls “just rhymes” — deals with “some serious, deep stuff,” he acknowledges. He writes about racism, justice, war, love, loss and heartache. He contemplates the very nature of life itself.

“I don’t write jokes,” Brown laughs. “What I write means something to me. And a lot of times, it’s what’s going on,” about topics in the news. “I’ve written about segregation in Riverhead and what happened to Colin Kaepernick, and stuff that went on with Jan. 6. That’s serious stuff. And I think a lot of people don’t take life as seriously as they should.” 

Dingle and Brown passed the Poetry Street torch to the group’s current coordinators, Bloomfield and Chip Williford, when Dingle moved west in 2020. At that point, Poetry Street had become a completely virtual event because of the pandemic. Williford worked to figure out the Zoom interface and set everything up, complete with Poetry Street’s own YouTube channel.

Since the pandemic, the events have been hybrid affairs, held at the Riverhead Free Library and through Zoom. The hybrid format has helped Poetry Street grow. 

“We’ve been getting 20 people in person and 15 to 20 people on Zoom,” Bloomfield said during a Zoom interview last week, attended by Williford, Brown and, from the Pacific Northwest, Dingle.

‘We’ve got a very good crowd and a lot of regulars,” Bloomfield said. 

“And I will say that, as far as the demographic, it has definitely broadened as far as younger, older and different nationalities, different races,” Williford added. 

Dingle said when Poetry Street first started, “it was a dream” that it would sustain itself long-term. “We had obviously created a space that hadn’t existed before in Riverhead, where people of different races and backgrounds could come together for something that was just enjoyable, to share their creativity,” she said. 

“Of course I wanted it to go on forever. And my big hope would be that it would go on without me, that it wasn’t dependent on a couple of people’s personalities, but it had its own heart that would keep going,” Dingle said. It was so fabulous when Chip and Maggie could step up and keep it going. Poetry Street is something that’s bigger than any of us.” 

“I’m so grateful and thankful that Chip and Maggie took the helm,” Brown added. “And the way they find these featured poets is just amazing to me. There has not been one event where I could say it was a disappointment. They keep coming up with these artists that are just fabulous. They just find them. I don’t know how.”

Bloomfield said they do it by going to a lot of poetry events on Zoom and in person, and taking down names and contact information.

Dingle, ever the poetry evangelist, brought her enthusiasm for poetry to  her new home in Clarke County, Washington, where she was named the county’s 2024 poet laureate. 

“I brought Poetry Street out here to the Pacific Northwest to the Camus library,” said Dingle. The west coast group is not on Zoom, but she said she invites everybody to attend Riverhead’s Poetry Street on Zoom. She’s passionate about the mission: “the room without a roof where everyone has a voice.”

“Poetry belongs to everyone,” Williford added. “And it comes from that special part of their heart, that’s tucked away, that they hid inside, that’s so special.”

Poetry Street will celebrate its 10th anniversary Saturday afternoon at Riverhead Free Library and on Zoom from 2 to 4 o’clock. All are invited to attend. See the Poetry Street website for instructions on how to attend via Zoom.