A Poetry Salon Makes a (Temporary) Home In Bed-Stuy

About 70 people poured into a modestly-sized apartment Friday night on Halsey Street between Bedford and Nostrand. The crowd garnered attention on the barely-lit residential block.  

The burst of people on the sidewalk with tickets in hand felt like the electrically charged moments before entering a Broadway show but with an underground, hush-hush feel. Around-the-way cats stared from the corner bodega and one man asked his friend, “What’s up over here?”

“Hi I’m Jade. Thank you for coming. I was in such a rush, I forgot to put on my underwear, but welcome,” blurted Jade Foster on the sidewalk in front of this private home. Foster is a Bed-Stuy transplant from the Washington DC area, a poet and organizer of The Revival, a multi-city poetry concert held intimately in various homes. The crowd of women out front laugh and Foster successfully breaks the ice with her charisma.

“The Revival” tour blends local guests, performers, poetry, music, drinks and fellowship in a salon-styled, laid-back setting. The crowd is completely filled with women. Although some are friends, most did not know each other and purchased tickets on-line to experience this unique event.

“It’s like church but The Revival is not your regular Sunday service. All stops are being pulled,” added Foster as she speaks about this intimate congregation of artistic performances reminiscent of an open-mic night.

Counter-culture prose, lyrics of identity, sex and raw emotion dance off the tongues of well-established poets and others who are rising the ranks. The adage goes poetry is to please or educate and it appears the crowd inside this warm, poorly-lit ground floor apartment are getting both.

The night is as bohemian as it gets, except for the $20 cover charge and cash bar. The microphone sits at an established altar in front of the deep-set bay windows. Rows of folding chairs are filled with women of all ages and styles. Pillows are make-shift seats and even deeper inside there are gatherings of standing room only participatns. 

Women gather around a staircase, over a dais of food and drinks in the kitchen and listen intently. You could hear a pin drop. All attention is given to each performer and the audience reacts with soulful agreements like “mmm hmmm,” “yes” and clapping.

“Sometimes we have to create our own place of worship,” said Foster, who grew up tightly woven into the church community in the South—a place she said that ultimately did not accept her when she proclaimed she was gay.

“Here’s where we can commune. Here’s where we can get the energy and the recharge we need to be who we are outside in the street,” Foster says passionately with a huge smile.

Foster’s friend Jasmina adds, “There’s something really special about her commitment to hosting it in women's homes and what it means for a women to open up her home to her community whether she knows them or not, just by being as magical as she [Jade Foster] is.”

At the heart of it, it’s an artist’s circle and a place of expression. “There’s always a good feeling in Brooklyn. It’s amazing,” says Michelle Antoinette Nelson, one of the travelling poets on the tour. “I do this because I don’t have a choice. I don’t know what else to do in my life.”

The next thing in Antoinette's life, as well as in Foster's and the rest of the poets is Philadelphia and Chicago, where more homes will play venue for the series.

"The Revival" is set to make its way back to Brooklyn next year.

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