Sea of Coffee Open Mic

On Sunday August 15, the Sea of Coffee Open Mic. for poetry and music will be held at the Dalai Java Coffeeshop at 157 South Main Street, Canandaigua. Sign-up for 5 minute slots will begin at 12:30 pm and the program will begin at 1 o’clock. Admission for performers and listeners is free.

The Open Mic. also offers two special guest readers, poets and writers with greater experience. Lisa Nichols, guest reader, has written from the time she was able to pick up a crayon to now, sleepy-eyed, full of coffee and fully grown. She  taught writing, but ran from the restrictive traditions of public education to the unknown, frightening and liberating freedom of pursuing her dreams of becoming an author. Her work has been published In Owl Light News, Le Mot Juste, and at places on-line. Nichols received a B.S. in English and Literature, a M.S. in Literacy Education, and currently serves as the President of Rochester’s Just Poets.

Michael Czarnecki has been writing poems for over fifty years and has made his living solely through the creative word for over a quarter of a century. He has had 17 books of his work published. Pror to covid, he often went on poetic journeys, giving hundreds of readings across America. Michael is grateful to be able to read in public again. A Buffalo native, Czarnecki is known to the national poetry community for his work as poet, story teller, publisher and memoirist. His own books include Twenty Days on Route 20, Wheeler Hill, and Simple Life, Simple Poems.  A poem by Czarnecki: A Short Winter Hike/walking knee-deep/through broken snow//wind howls/flakes fall//soon/even my tracks/will disappear

Nichols and Czarnecki will read for twenty minutes each, in and around musicians, storytellers, writers of all kinds, whoever shows up. The event is open to the public and free.