Open Mic:Expressions in Verse and music

We celebrated the first anniversary, of my starting the open mic here in Sumter, SC. Since we started at Drew's Blues Cafe, and then moved to the community center, I brought in a platter from DBC to mark the anniversary. We had poets and singers and a wonderful night. We had some fun with our friend, Colette Jones. She does this wonderful poem called Grab Bag. She was challenged by one of her co-workers, while standing in line in the lunch line to write a poem about all the candies there. Well, she did! So to honor her and give her some visuals as she performed the poem we presented her with a bag of some of the candies she mentions in her poem. Of course, I was so into the performance and the chat that I forgot to take a picture of her with the 'grab bab!' Duh!!! Others who joined us for the night of festivities were: Linda Rowe (singer/guitar player) who entertained us with songs from the 60's! Aaron Johnson who brought his son, Kwon(I hope I got the spelling right), surprised us all. He performed his, as usual, wonderful poetry then asked if he could sing one. Well, jaws dropped when this beautiful voice sang an equally beautiful love song. You could have heard a pin drop. Hopefully we'll here more of his singing at future open mics. Kathleen Roy was her usual entertaining self who kept us laughing with her insightful and humorous poetry. Beth Langley, singer/lyricist/guitarist, played and sang original works with us. We always enjoy her songs and were pleased to be among the first to hear one of her latest. Always fun! Always entertaining! We had two new young men, Walter and Roshad Helton, join us, who I hope will come back next month, even after realizing what a crazy bunch we are! We had the battle of poems at one point when Kathleen read one talking about what it's like getting old...so I had to counter with my "I'm Not Getting Old" and Aaron had read a poem about seeing things differently as he got older...and we discussed how much fun it would be to actually write poems that were opposite and read them as a point/counterpoint type reading. All in all it was so much fun I hated to see the night end. Thanks everyone for making the night so special! See you all in July!