At a quarter to seven Friday, University students and Charlottesville locals alike settled down in folding chairs snugly nestled between the tall wooden bookshelves that line the walls of New Dominion Bookshop. Pleasantly chatting amongst themselves, they awaited the introduction of the evening’s first speaker. With the arrival of the hour, Hodges Adams, New Dominion event host and University lecturer of English Writing and Poetry, moved to the microphone placed at the foot of the staircase in the center of the shop with a Magic 8 Ball in hand.
“Will this be a good National Poetry Month?” a voice from the back of the shop called. “My reply is no!” Adams read from the Magic 8 Ball to the audience’s laughter. With that, Friday Night Writes for the month of April had begun.
An institution of Charlottesville’s Historic Downtown Mall since 1924, New Dominion Bookshop is the oldest independent bookseller in Virginia, celebrating its centennial this month. In addition to an event calendar full of author visits and readings, New Dominion opens its doors for Friday Night Writes the first Friday of each month. Friday Night Writes provides an open mic for emerging Charlottesville musicians and writers to share their unpublished work with the local community.
“When we think about writing, we tend to think a lot about publication and being really polished,” Adams said. “We wanted to have a space that was just fun and for the community and for people to come share what they were thinking about, what they were working on [and] what they were feeling.”
Last Friday, the lineup included 10 different speakers, all of different ages and life experiences. The audience welcomed everyone to the microphone with a rousing chorus of “the one, the only, the only one I know!” per Friday Night Writes tradition before quickly quieting to offer their undivided attention to each five-minute recitation.
The first speaker — introduced by Adams as Eve. C — began the night’s readings with two short but tender poems exploring her emotional vulnerability called “Dare I Ask You” and “Dusting.” In the latter, the speaker contrasts the mundanity of her household chores with her deep-seated desire to be “free to be irregular.” As she spoke, she held up the objects that had inspired her work, a photograph of a lake and a faded paper card scrawled all over with names.
Interspersed with the emotionally hard-hitting material were recitations of a more humorous nature from other speakers. Television script-writer Kate Bennett enlisted the help of her friend Phoebe to recite two scenes — and swear up a storm — in preparation for her new police crime drama. Accidentally mixing up their script pages halfway through a scene, the two women played off the mistake well, inspiring audience laughter. Later on, Phoebe shared an excerpt from her own work, delighting the audience with her story of drunkenly convincing a group of firemen to break into a friend’s apartment for her.
It is this wide-ranging tonal diversity in the writing shared at Friday Night Writes that keeps people coming back each month. Third-year College student Anna Batman said she attends every Friday Night Writes with her father, John Batman, a local writer himself. Although she never participates herself, Batman said she enjoys hearing from everyone who does.
“I think it’s a really interesting way to see other people’s perspectives on a similar day-to-day life,” said Anna Batman, remarking on how all the speakers come from the same, close-knit community, but are all different nevertheless. “My life is very different [from theirs]. I like to hear other people’s perspectives, their stories.”
Halfway through the readings there was a brief intermission where all those in attendance had the chance to win a free, lightly damaged book in a raffle drawing. New Dominion gave away five books, ranging from the mammoth-sized “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace to the short memoir “Plain” by local author Mary Alice Hostetter.
Following the intermission, a speaker introduced as Mary Jean shared a short story about her struggles trying to sell her coffee table online. In a genius use of narrative suspense, she eventually reveals that the only two offers she received were from her ex-husband’s second wife and her new boyfriend, to great comic effect. Beneath the surface of her story is a thoughtful reflection on the unique nature of Charlottesville as a small town with — thanks to the size of the University — so many strangers.
To close the evening, Adams took advantage of the final spot always reserved for New Dominion staff to share their own rendition of William Butler Yeats’ “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.” In a touching homage to their mother, who gave them their love of poetry, Adams substituted the word “clothes” for Yeats’ “cloth,” just as their mother used to mistakenly recite the poem.
“A good poem 100 years ago is a good poem today,” said John Batman, “If it meets certain criteria [of] what we can identify with — the emotions [of] love, passion, loss, death [and] choice. That’s what [Adams] was hinting at.”
More than anything else, Friday Night Writes is a celebration of these emotions and the power they hold to bring people and communities together.
“[Friday Night Writes] has just turned into a space where we can laugh and we can commiserate,” Adams said. “I think that was the original intention and definitely what it continues to be.”
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