[Photo: Readers at the Open Mic share not only from their own writing but from classic works by authors such as Tolstoy.]
This article was published in the Spring 2011 semester in Excelsior
By Angelica Berry
Pacific Standard, a bar in Park Slope, offers a stable dose of poetry for months to anyone willing to listen. A space beyond the bar with the look of a retired classroom, behind a black velvet curtain atop a few wooden steps, welcomes literary guests every other Thursday night from September through June.
Pacific Standard is home to the Chin Music Reading Series, led by Bryan Patrick Miller. It’s free and features poets that Miller finds admirable. “I read widely and solicit poets whose work I love,” he said. Miller has had the pleasure of choosing the reader lineup for the past year after taking over for Colin Cheney, the creator of Chin Music who is away in Thailand. The series has been running as long as the bar, four years, and the plan is to keep it going indefinitely.
