1,561st Friday

Two manuscripts and a microphone. That’s how First Fridays go down at Changing Hands Bookstore. At 7 p.m. Friday, January 4, our favorite lit nerds celebrate three decades of bold souls stepping up to bleed in public (1,500 showcases, give or take) during 30 Years of First Friday Poetry. That’s thousands of jingles, sonnets, rants, howls, and odes to love and love lost.

One trick to make a poetry reading more exciting: Don’t just sit there, read something. Event organizers make it easy, allowing readers to bypass their own potentially ill-advised confessions and declaim the verse of other poets. Plus, participating is guaranteed to take the edge off of your jaded superiority.