Wake Forest Coffee Company hosts first live poetry since COVID

By Antino Art • @RaleighisforRonin

Live poetry returns to Wake Forest on Saturday, June 5 in a show billed as The Quarantined Poets Supper Club.

The show will be hosted by the Wake Forest Coffee Company in collaboration with local poets. Located in historic downtown Wake Forest, the indie coffeehouse became an epicenter for spoken word poetry in the Triangle.

Where Unheard Voices Howled

It was the year before COVID. The cafe began hosting poetry nights every month in their second-story artist loft — a hideaway of wooden floorboards and dimmed recess lights, back-set by the easels and canvases of local painters. Soon, the cafe built a marquee name in the scene. Poets from all over the Raleigh-Durham area would converge with their favorite caffeinated drink in hand, and howl their truths into a mic in front of standing room only audiences.

A Common Ground

“We are what the community needs us to be,” said founder and owner Albert Barneto, who still   grinds and serves locally sourced coffee from behind the counter. “We’re a community coffeehouse. Always have been.”

As a gathering space for and by the people, celebrating free speech through poetry nights was natural.

The poets were literally up there, as in, you had to walk up a flight of stairs to find them. And the shows were as diverse as those who attended.

On Halloween, they hosted Night of the Living Dead Poets Society, a conceptual show where poets in masks performed pieces about fear, as if prophesying the days to come. Spring saw The Queen’s Speech, which featured an all-female lineup rallying behind a simple message: respect women by listening. They rang in 2020 with a show called Limitless, where poets expressed their resolutions and goals, as if summoning the optimism needed to survive the vicious year ahead.

Albert knows the impact poetry can have.

He grew up in San Francisco, across the street from the City Lights bookshop, where Ginsberg and other literary icons read their works. The emergence of poetry nights at Wake Forest Coffee was like fate.

Their House is Yours

“Voices needed to be heard, so I gave them a place where they could speak freely,” said Albert.

The community support is what makes Albert proud about being a small business in the Triangle, where growth is fueled by the contribution of different experiences.

As long as there’s a need to be heard, there will always be poetry nights.

San Francisco has City Lights. Chicago has the Green Mill. New York City had the Nuyorican Cafe, which shuttered last year (compliments of the pandemic). And the Triangle (still) has the Wake Forest Coffee Company.

When asked how to approach 2021, Albert’s response was poetic: “Know that it won’t always be dark.”

His morning ritual echoes this belief. Before opening, he would sit by the window of the cafe with the lights off and greet the day like anyone else: holding a cup of coffee and the comfort of hope, regardless of what happens next.

Show Information:

The Quarantined Poets Supper Club: A show of spoken word sustenance Saturday, June 5, 2021

Doors 7p, Show 730p

156 S White St, Wake Forest, NC 27587 Tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-quarantined-poets-supper-club-a-show-of-spoken-word-sustenanc e-tickets-151217980049

Please wear a mask.

Featuring performances by: Spoken Watson Travis Kyng

Jake CGraves DS Will Sacred Hiku

with music by Mark Espinosa Hosted by Antino Art.

All proceeds go to support the artists.

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