Literati, the creative writing club at ETSU, is celebrating Poetry Month during April.
The group meets once a week to develop their writing skills and learn from other members.
“We meet every Wednesday at 4 p.m. at the Willow Tree Coffeehouse in downtown Johnson City,” said Blaine Boles, president of Literati. “It’s a really casual affair; we sit around, we share our own work and we critique it and pass it around.”
Even if you don’t have writing to bring, the club meetings can still be a great place to go.
“If you don’t have any work that you want to share, I would recommend you bring a poem,” Boles said, “or if you just want to talk about literary theory or something, it’s a great place to do that.”
If you do have work to bring, Literati can be a great place to get information and inspiration.
“It’s kind of like an extracurricular workshop for creative writers who want to work outside of their class schedule,” Boles said. “We have a few grad students who come and contribute, and we’re trying to work in coordination with the Johnson City Poets Collective.”
Sometimes the group will have meetings where they don’t have anything to critique, but that doesn’t stop them from having a good time.
“We’ve had a few meetings where nobody brought anything, and we just sat around and drank coffee and acted like pretentious hipsters,” Boles said. “It’s still a lot of fun.”
Literati is celebrating Poetry Month and the end of the semester with two upcoming events.
“In addition to our regular meetings, Literati is sponsoring a few events that are being hosted by the Literature and Language Department at ETSU,” Boles said.
The first event is at 8 p.m. April 12 at the Willow Tree Coffeehouse.
“Dr. Jesse Graves and a local musician, R. B. Morris, are collaboratively performing an evening of poetry and music,” Boles said. “There is a cover charge — it’s five dollars at the door — but you get to sit there and listen to some hipster folk artist come in and play some awesome songs, and then our very own Dr. Graves will be reading intermittently.”
The second event is at 7 p.m. April 13 in the Ball Hall Auditorium.
“It’s the fourth annual Jack Higgs memorial reading,” Boles said. “Lisa Alther will be giving a reading followed by a Q & A session. They will be announcing the winners of the Mockingbird prizes for fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.”
Both events will celebrate creative writing and the love of language that the Literati of ETSU strives to share with the community.
