August 30 Poetry Event

Join us to listen to some poetry—or share some writing of your own—at Poetry in the Boro at Dapper Owl on Sunday evening, August 30, 2026. Nashville area poet and storyteller Kenieha Boren, aka Kenny Rae, will be our feature. Read more about her below.

The feature will be at 6:00, with open mic to follow. Drip coffee and light nibbles will be available at no charge. However, we hope that you’ll order from Dapper Owl’s tasty menu to help make this a winning collaboration for all of us! Their menu includes coffee, tea, beer, cider, chips, and baked goods.

Arrival by 5:45 recommended so that the Owl's staff can take care of most food and drink orders before we get our program started.

About the open mic

We are experimenting with some changes to our process this summer so that we can continue to hear from lots of you but don't feel quite as rushed. Here's what's happening in August:

• Sign up for the open mic on site anytime from 5:30 to 6:00 PM.

• We're running a lottery-style open mic: At 6:00 PM, our team puts everyone registered for the open mic into a random number generator and draws 15-18 names. After the feature, we start announcing our open mic slots.

• We always reserve a few slots for first-timers to our open mic.

• Open mic readers can share poetry or spoken word: 1 poem or three minutes, whichever comes first. Reading a favorite poem by another writer is fine, too. Sign up for the open mic on site. Sign ups begin when doors open at 5:30. No early admittance.

• While we welcome all styles of poetry, we ask that readers be prepared to keep their pieces “PG-13” depending on our audience, which sometimes includes younger people.

Location and parking tips

The Dapper Owl coffee pub is located at 2412 East Main St. just past its intersection with Rutherford Blvd., on the east side of the MTSU campus. Overflow parking is on the Arnold Lane side of the building – pull in perpendicular to the building to allow more cars to fit (careful of the AC unit!) or park on the side of road down Arnold Lane (please don’t block any driveways).

About our feature

Kenieha Boren, aka Kenny Rae, is a visual poet, storyteller, and experiential curator from Nashville, TN. She explores memory, identity, the construction of self through blackout poetry, multi medium collage, writing, and embodied performance. She has performed all across Nashville at Oz Arts, Kindling Arts Festival, and Nation Museum of African American Music. She is the founder of Iris & The Shadow Create Studio where she curated immersive experiences and poetry installations that inspire reflection and dialogue. Kenieha is passionate about dance, healing arts, and creative self expression and believes in the power of transforming pain into poetry.

Challenge words

If you like, write a new piece to share that includes one, some, or ALL of these words, selected by our audience at our last gathering:

sashay | shimmer | moonlight | hobbit | dress | doom | summer | eleven | gossip | maple (tree)

We rely on your donations

ADMISSION IS FREE. A DONATION of $5 or more is appreciated to help us offset our costs. You can donate using PayPal at paypal.me/poetryintheboro. We also accept donations on site.

Poetry in the Boro thanks the Rutherford Arts Alliance and MTSU Write for their on-going partnerships and support.