Blacklisted Poets cohost Amy Trout reads a poem at HMAC.
“It’s very bright up here tonight, guys, and it feels really weird,” laughs poet Amy Trout from a dimly lit Stage on Herr at HMAC.
She shakes it off and puts another hand on the mic.
“Okay, I’m going to read one that I’ve read a few times. I wrote it this spring, but I’ve been really working on this poem, so you’re going to hear it again,” she tells the crowd of 20 on a frigid December Thursday night.
She jumps into verse. Basking in the glow of a fireplace projected floor-to-ceiling onto the wall, people nod along with her, as if to say, “I’ve been there too.” They smile at quirky lines. When she’s read the last word, she hits a bell on the podium to mark the poem’s end.
The echo of footsteps leaving the stage, cloaked by applause, say: It is time for the next speaker.
Trout, and her friend and fellow poet Anna Jones, are the cohosts of Blacklisted Poets, a Harrisburg poetry reading group that meets every Thursday at 8 p.m. In the winter, hidden away in HMAC’s basement. In the summer, out in the open in the venue’s courtyard.
“We accept any kind of poetry, any genre, any form,” Trout says.
Founded by the late Harrisburg poet Marty Esworthy as “the Almost Uptown Poetry Cartel,” the group has been meeting on the same night now for roughly 30 years. In 2021, Trout and Jones took over the group.
They changed the group’s name to mark its new era. Its “Blacklisted” title is a nod to how the group bounced between venues early after the takeover, reading at places like coffee shops, delis or bookstores.
They eventually found a home at HMAC where Trout’s husband, Kevyn Knox, is a manager. Its late hours are a plus for the poets. Because the venue is open until 2 a.m., they can read a bit past their 10 p.m. end time, if needed.
Jones reveres how the group has naturally attracted a diverse following.
“It’s one of the only places in this city where you have people of all backgrounds, all ages, all cultures,” Jones says.
She herself is a transplant from England, who came to Harrisburg in 2008. The following year, she took a class at HACC with Rick Kearns, the current poet laureate of Harrisburg, who suggested she come to the group to socialize with other poets.
As she recalls, doing so marked a big turning point in her life.
“This poetry reading legit saved my life when I first moved to the country,” Jones says.
She’s made countless lifelong friends through the group and regards its continued Thursday night occurrence as a form of tribute to her late mentor, whose values, she says, remain at the group’s core.
“His passion was the fact that poetry is supposed to live off the page. It’s an oral tradition. It goes right back to Beowulf, to the Middle Ages, to stories told around campfires,” Jones says.
She says too many people think of poetry “as just being in books.”
“Saying something out loud is so much more powerful than just writing it down,” she says.
Trout brings up another rule of Esworthy’s—never apologizing for your art. The forum of the readings fosters an energy of acceptance.
Poets at the reading bring life experiences of all kinds to the stage.
One poet tells of a challenging predicament: getting a court summons in the mail, months after a car crash that seriously injured her back. It took her months to physically recover from the wreck. She tells the crowd, in poetic verse, how she is now being charged for drug possession for THC found in her car’s glove compartment. Her boyfriend’s THC by the way, she says.
She worries the charge could impact her nursing license. She curses the male driver who stopped in front of her in a fit of road rage, upending her life.
Another poet examines her past self. Line by line, she wonders if she would have ended up with her abusive ex-husband if she wouldn’t have been sexually assaulted at a teenage party.
Jones says the nature of poetry is that it often brings such emotional subjects to the forefront.
“People talk about holding space—that’s what poetry does,” Jones says.
This offers poets a chance, Trout adds, to get to know each other better and ultimately, offer support.
“Nobody in this room will ever be mean to anybody about what they read or judge them,” Trout says. “If anything, they’re overly supportive of whatever people are reading on-stage.”
Another poet, Abbie, agrees.
“I call this my weekly therapy,” she quips.
When Trout and Jones talk about what Blacklisted Poets means to them, they talk about community. Because people introduce themselves to the crowd when they go up to the mic, it doesn’t take long for people to become “regulars.”
The group is ever-changing. New poets show up every week, some stick around. Some become entrenched in the community.
“We ask everybody their name. We talk to everybody. It’s very community-oriented,” Trout says.
“In the nearly 30 years I’ve been doing this, I get more inspiration for new poems from listening than from anywhere else,” Trout says.
The group boasts several veteran members who have been coming for upwards of 20 years.
“Most of my closest friends in the world came from this poetry reading in one way or another,” Trout says.
After two hours and more than a dozen poets, walking the line between heartbreak and humor, Jones gets up to close out the night. She tells the group how much she appreciates them. She thanks them for coming out and sharing what was on their minds.
“It took bravery, it took strength, it took energy,” Jones says. “This is one of the best parts of my week.”
With that, she introduces the night’s final poem. It’s about her creative path. It winds through lives writing novels, or plays, or designing costumes—that she could never pursue.
“This is about being a poet,” she says. “This is called: ‘I’m not for you.’”
The Blacklisted Poets meet at HMAC on Thursday nights. For more information, visit the group’s Facebook page.
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