Jazz Appreciation Month 2023: One for the Books

For Jazz Appreciation Month, and National Poetry Month, I had a chance to collaborate with Jo and Huck Truesdell at their bookstore Tidepool Bookshop in Worcester, Massachusetts. Spine Poems and Jazz Night turned out to be a hit. No pen and paper needed for this fun evening of improvisational jazz and poetry writing! I invited my friend, and music maker, Martin Gohary to join us, and bring some improv music to the spoken word poetry created that night. Martin invited his friend and colleague Kat Jara to join us with her violin.

The music inspired the poems which in turn inspired the music! We used Annette Dauphin Simon's fabulous book “Spinet Poems: An Eclectic Collection of Found Verse for Book Lovers” as the model for creating our own short verses using the spines of books at the bookstore. With upwards of 20 people present, the space was perfect for meandering the bookshelves, and finding titles to string together. Huck took photos on the fly and I had the pleasure of closing with a dramatic reading of the “spine” poems. By the way, the acoustics at TidePool is astounding, and in the end, everyone agreed this should be an annual thing!📚