The Poetry Brothel: A Masquerade

It’s almost October already and we still don’t know what day it is in San Francisco but we know we’re landing again soon and your city lights are guiding us in. The Poetry Brothel is back and for lack of a better phrase, San Francisco, we need you! Come again into our underground and listen to the soft sounds of house band The Hot Baked Goods, watch Harvest Moon and Edie Eve dance, watch the bright play of words that skirt the walls light up the room. We’re back in your pockets, loves, we’re back in your alleys, we’re back on the slopes and we aren’t leaving until we’ve told you something precious, something small that you can hold under you tongue like a sea shell, like a pea of salt, like an egg at dawn, like something all together falling apart. Put us back together St. Francis, we’re a flock of humming birds, our hearts are racing, and our songs, our songs, our songs. Our songs are almost too fast to see.

There is no strict dress code, but we encourage you to dress for the occasion. Do not resist the Masquerade! Masks may change hands as the night unfolds, but you are obliged to bring your own. Doors open at 8pm, and seating is first come, first serve. The show begins at 9pm.

The Poetry Brothel is a unique and immersive poetry event that takes poetry outside classrooms and lecture halls and places it in the lush interiors of a bordello. Based in concept on the fin-de-siecle bordellos in New Orleans and Paris, many of which functioned as safe havens for fledgling, avant-garde artists, The Poetry Brothel’s “Madame” presents a rotating cast of poets as “whores,” each operating within a carefully constructed character, who impart their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private, one-on-one poetry readings in back rooms. For a small fee, all of the “poetry whores” are available for these sequestered readings at any time during the event. Of course, any true brothel needs a good cover; The Poetry Brothel’s is an immersive cabaret, offering a full bar, live jazz, burlesque dancers, painters, and fortune-tellers, with newly integrated themes, performances and installations at each event.