Photo provided Skye Nicholson’s Open Mic Poetry & Prose series will come to a close with Epilogue: Open Mic Poetry & Prose on Thursday.
“Bittersweet” is the perfect word to describe the end of local poet Skye Nicholson’s Open Mic Poetry & Prose series, coming to a close with Epilogue: Open Mic Poetry & Prose on Thursday.
The event will be the last she hosts and the last the Columbus Area Arts Council sponsors. Though she knows it is hard to end something so many people have responded positively to over the past three years, she knows it will continue on in the many poetry-related experiences that have emerged from it.
“Even though this event is closing, I feel like it’s been the birthplace, it’s like the nebula for all these other poetry experiences,” Nicholson said. “It’s kind of been the opportunity and the catalyst for all these poets to find each other and then continue to support each other’s work in different ways.”
Epilogue: Open Mic Poetry & Prose will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at Gramz Bakery. The event is PG-13.
The Open Mic Poetry & Prose series, held the second Thursday of every month, invited featured poets, who ranged from published authors to event regulars, to come up to the mic and share their works. Following this, the open mic portion of the event would begin and last for about an hour.
“With open mic, we never really know what you’re going to get and that’s I think the beauty of poetry is that poetry is the language of the soul and it can be very raw and vulnerable at times,” Nicholson said. “We often have poets that bring us to tears and then we often have poets that bring us to laughter as well.”
Thursday’s event will see the return of past featured poets, such as Chris Dean and Eric Riddle, in addition to longtime participants. Anybody, whether they have come to previous events or not, are also welcome to join them and read their words to the audience.
The series began when Nicholson, a published poet with three books to her name, wanted a space to share her words and offer that same space to other writers. Unable to find that space in town, she started the open mic events on her own at a yoga studio in March of 2022.
They later moved to having their open mics at Hotel Indigo, and that’s when the Columbus Area Arts Council decided to partner with her in February of 2023. Brooke Hawkins, executive director of the Columbus Area Arts Council, said they were always aware of Nicholson as a successful local creative and her work in building a poetry network within the community.
When the series moved to Hotel Indigo, Hawkins thought that would be a great place for them to have a program as well.
“We decided that if we worked together and kind of used the Arts Council to help promote the event and create some branding and some language around it that we could maybe reach an even larger audience and really continue to grow what she had already started,” Hawkins said.
That partnership worked, with Hawkins saying they grew in size to having about 20 to 30 people attending and several regulars. They later moved the series to the Bartholomew County Public Library, but Nicholson stayed on as the creative behind the series and the host throughout it all.
She said the community response to the series has been amazing. What’s interesting to her is how many poets and writers, who wouldn’t necessarily self-identify as poets, have come out, but there have also been many published poets in the community who have come out.
“It’s overwhelming how many people really responded in a way where they needed that space to share their words, to be heard and then we’ve also had many, many people who come every month just to listen,” Nicholson said. “So they’ve never gotten on the mic, they’ve never read, but it’s been a staple in their lives to hold space for and hear the words of our community poets.”
Nicholson said she decided to end the series as she thought her role as host was fading as she started focusing more on her business Wellbeing Workshops Co., and she also wanted to vacate the role so others could fill it. From these open mic events, she said others like Chris Dean have created their own poetry events.
“We also had another poet who decided to do a similar open mic in Scottsburg, his name is Michael Duckwall, and so through this event he’s created another open mic,” Nicholson said.
Hawkins said the Arts Council will also offer literary arts micro grants to those wanting to build on and develop that community network. Nicholson knows that the event has meant a lot to many in the community and that it is hard to see something like that come to an end, but just like the spoken poetry she loves, it doesn’t last forever.
That’s what makes it so powerful, she said, and the memory the event created is part of what will guide others into whatever the future may hold, she said. The event series has also given several people the opportunity to find each other and that realization that they weren’t writing poems in isolation, Nicholson said.
“This event has given us a space to be heard by others and in sharing your words aloud, they become more solidified, you become more validated in your experiences,” Nicholson said. “And by hearing other people who can express their emotions through poetry, oftentimes poems are a way of saying what we are feeling, but have a hard time expressing.”
