September 20
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, September 20, 2026. PLEASE NOTE, this a week earlier than we previously announced!

Nashville area poet James Croal Jackson will be our feature. Read more about James 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

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. He has four chapbooks, his latest being A God You Believed In, a winner of Pinhole Poetry's inaugural chapbook contest in 2023. He has published nearly 2,000 poems in various publications over the past thirteen years. He is a past winner of the William Redding Memorial Poetry Prize and one of his poems was featured in Rattle's recent 'Best of the Ekphrastic Challenge' anthology. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville. Read more at www.jamescroaljackson.com. 

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:

love | extrapolate | eviscerate | drive | rhinestone | symapthize | delicious | gelatinous | voloptuous | alliaceous (which, if you're like us and need to look up, means resembling garlic or onion in smell or taste. Extra points if you learn how to spell it. 😅)

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.