lynchburg’s “underground” poetry scene
Certain stories that float around the newsroom are known as ”Liz Barry stories.” I didn’t coin the phrase but am flattered. As we grow as reporters, we carve our niches. One of my strengths is my ability to relate to everyday people from diverse backgrounds. Right now I’m focusing on improving my beat management and investigative reporting skills, but I still love a good feature!
Poets create makeshift movement in Underground space
By Liz Barry on Jan. 27, 2010
The stage was a patch of concrete floor lit by Christmas lights and a lamp without a shade.
Obscured by the shadows, a segment of Lynchburg’s young bohemians, twenty-somethings mostly, crammed into The Underground, a poetry reading in a rental home basement off Rivermont Avenue.
Cheap beer flowed, cigarettes burned on the back porch, but the focus was on spoken word.
About 14 readers took the stage, reading a mix of original works and poems by Whitman, Neruda, Poe and others.
“The idea is to share for catharsis and empathy,” said Glory Szabo, 23, a local college student from Hungary with raven-colored hair and red-painted lips.
The event grew from a simple connection between two friends. Last year, Szabo and 22-year-old Stacie Bergman — brokenhearted from failed relationships — read each other poems they had written about their ordeals. At the edge of loneliness, the friends realized they were not alone — they shared pain and poetry.
Last fall, Szabo and Bergman decided to organize a small reading for their friends. But word spread, through Facebook and word-of-mouth, to friends and friends of friends, and the intimate gathering ending up drawing a crowd up more than 60 people.
“It totally outgrew our expectations. It spread like wildfire,” said Szabo.The Underground turns the solitary act of writing and reading poetry into a communal experience. The unconventional setting, outside of more established venues like coffeehouses or college campuses, provides a have for writers who might not otherwise dare to share their poems for an audience.
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