Writing poetry is a solitary kind of pursuit, best left to the professionals. Right?
Not if you do it in a brewery surrounded by friends who are also sipping pints and slinging verse.
That’s the idea behind Poetry & Pints, set for 6 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 14, at Hopkinsville Brewing Co.
Kentucky poet and playwright Constance Alexander will lead the one-hour workshop. Sponsored by Hoptown Chronicle and WKMS, the public radio station at Murray State University, the workshop is one of this year’s Big Read events.
Alexander has been leading poetry workshops for more than 30 years. She understands that poetry can be intimidating. She enjoys seeing workshop participants discover their hidden talents as she leads them in writing prompts.
“It’s just great to see how excited people can get to capture their own thoughts,” she told Hoptown Chronicle editor Jennifer P. Brown.
Alexander has been writing verse since she won a poetry contest in the fourth grade. More than 50 years later, she still recalls how surprised she was at her ability.
“It was as if someone else had written it,” she said.
As a workshop leader, she’s seen others experience the satisfaction that comes from writing a poem.
“We have so much more inside of us than we know,” she said.
Brown said the workshop helps Hoptown Chronicle get back to one of the nonprofit news outlet’s original goals of organizing events that support community-building. COVID-19 restrictions prevented those kinds of gatherings.
The last time Hoptown Chronicle and WKMS co-hosted an event was nearly three years ago at Homegrown Poems. At that gathering, also for Big Read, community members read poems that they had written in advance.
But for Poetry & Pints, no advance work will be needed.
“Just come and see what happens,” Brown said. “I signed up for one of Constance’s workshops several months ago, and I couldn’t believe how much I was able to write in a very short amount of time — even though I have rarely written poetry in my life.”
Alexander is a Hoptown Chronicle board member and a longtime collaborator with WKMS. She is the author of several volumes of poetry, including “From Cradle to Grace,” which earned praise from Kentucky novelist Bobbie Ann Mason.
“I love this little book,” Mason wrote. “These poems are startling, profound, and enlightening. They give me the shivers, they’re so plain and direct—not dressed up. This exactness makes thrilling poetry, stuff that might be hard to bear if it weren’t so funny. And true.”
