November 22
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,  November 22 .

Our feature will be Poetry in the Boro regular and popular middle Tennessee spoken word artist, B. the Buddha (aka songwriter Billy Henderson). Read more about B. the Buddha 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

Our open mic is lottery-style when demand exceeds available slots. Here's how it works:

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

• 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

Billy ‘B the Buddha’ Henderson was licensed to preach at 15 and spent 25 years as a Southern Baptist minister. He started writing songs as a hobby and became a professional writer for hire with over 500 recordings. A serendipitous meeting at a North Nashville Poetry Street Festival in 2017 altered the trajectory of his life when he was profoundly influenced by several Black slam poets who were several decades younger than him. The greatest joy in his life has been turning words on a page into a living, breathing interaction with the audience. His mission is his mantra: to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

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:

grateful | cooking | gather | stomp | whisper | beckon | explore 

and the following words you might use as proper (capitalized) or common nouns: 

thanksgiving | cowboy | lion 

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.