Monthly Lit Mic event draws Washington’s Poet Laureate to Bushel & Bee

LEAVENWORTH — Inside the shopping platz at 9th and Front Streets in Leavenworth, there are any number of things you can get to satisfy a craving: Steaks downstairs at the Old World Chophouse, ice cream and sweets upstairs at Coldstone and The Taffy Shop, or even something to whisk you away at The Little Kitchen Shop.

But up in the corner of the building, in a warmly-lit taproom called Bushel & Bee, you can get a pull from one of the 24 taps of ciders, meads and beers, play some of the board games crowding the shelves between tables, and once a month, on the first Tuesday, you can satisfy your craving for amazing recited literary work.

Dubbed “NCW’s loudest open mic,” Lit Mic is the brainchild of Holly Thorpe, a master of many things centered on words and part of the tapestry of instruction found at Wenatchee Valley College. It happens every month except July — the first Tuesday falling, of course, somewhere too near a hectic holiday to make it truly enjoyable to try and make fireworks with a poem or a spoken word piece when there’s so much going on outside.

August’s event was one for the mental libraries of its attendees. Most of the regular readers were there, minus a notable writer who traditionally goes first but was occupied with a Shakespeare production, and a few others. But the last time Derek Sheffield attended a Lit Mic, it was before he became Washington State’s Poet Laureate.

Now that he holds such a lofty position, his attendance holds a different meaning: The Poet Laureate follows a mandate to spread the gospel of poetry, as it were. He’s already been to a number of speaking engagements and events, including at a prison, a poetry club at a senior center in Bellevue, and even one at Goodman Middle School in Gig Harbor, where Sheffield was a student in his formative years. His August 5 appearance at the Lit Mic feels like when a band makes a special stop back home while on tour.

The works recited on this particular Tuesday are as special as ever. Two brand new readers have signed up, one recruited from another open mic down in Wenatchee and one who had to be gently coaxed to share her very personal piece by Thorpe, the host.

Themes run the gamut: Weasel as affectionate and wise companion; diary entries from a 15-year-old girl who really hopes John likes her (even though she’d end up marrying William, who once tormented her for three weeks without so much as a phone call); the cloud that descends on a crimson-clad dancer as the music comes to an end; fresh salmon in exchange for cigarettes and advice on how to exact revenge on a drunken abuser.

As Thorpe introduces Sheffield, it’s a reminder that he’s even in the room; listeners have all but forgotten the entire world around them, even the readers, many of whom have now heard their names and character descriptions in an ode from a regular writer calling each one a jewel in her crown. What should be the calm authority of wisdom takes the microphone, and suddenly the Poet Laureate is one of the Lit Mic crew. He reads a piece from his daughter, and more, shares anecdotes and appreciation for earlier readers, and is rightly celebrated as a worthy contributor to the night’s work.

But Sheffield reminds Thorpe that she was his student way back when, and that she has a phrase from a poem in his curriculum tattooed on here — “Absurd living ghost,” she confirms from the audience, referencing the poem “No Hemlock Rock” by Jennifer Michael Hecht. It’s almost an aside to say that good poetry is indelible, a mark on us.

After the event has ended, one question remains for Sheffield: Since the Leavenworth area is his actual home, which of the places that he’s gone as an ambassador of poetry has felt the most receptive, the most like home to him?

“I just started in May,” Sheffield says, “but so far, the most receptive was a talk I gave for the Okanogan Land Trust that focused on poetry and wildness and how they’re connected. But it was special to go back to the middle school that I survived and visit a couple of classrooms there, those halls, and remember how desperate and scary and hard it was to be 12 and 13. To come back a life later… I was literally at home, where I’d been as a child.”

Asked the same question, Holly Thorpe answers in a less direct way. After all, this event is her creation, and September will mark the third anniversary of its beginning.

“When you start something from scratch, and you’re making it up, you have to rely on your friends and family to come even if it sucks,” she says. “And then you have to hope they stick it out and it stops sucking and other people show up too. The cool part is, my friends and family keep coming back, but also these people who wander in [to Bushel & Bee, unaware that there’s an open mic happening] get to experience this as well. It feels like we’ve built a home and we get to keep welcoming people into it. To have a home this comfortable, this full of joy, after three years feels like an accomplishment.”

The next Lit Mic — remember, the first Tuesday of each month — will be September 2 at 7 p.m. at Bushel & Bee, 900 Front Street in Leavenworth. If you plan on writing, the optional prompt for next month is “Ritual.”

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media