The Poetry Renaissance storms The Alibi Aftermath with help from Bards on the Rocks

MANCHESTER, NH – “It’s damn near an apocalypse outside,” declared Damian Rucci, the New Jersey poet who started The Poetry Renaissance in the Garden State in 2021, a movement spreading nationwide that he and his friend Jeremiah Walton, of Manchester, are spreading.

Torrential rains poured down on The Queen City streets Monday night as regional artists of all ilks descended on The Alibi Aftermath on Wilson Street, a neighborhood bar now under new ownership and looking to expand its clientele.

Owner Trevor Hart said that he aims for The Alibi Aftermath to become a spot where artists and locals can coexist. “I want this to be a place where blue-collar people, art, and culture can come to meet,” he said, pointing to an updated menu and affordable drink prices.

And it just so happened this was exactly the place where a group of traveling artists found refuge from the late-summer storm.

On Aug. 19, the comedy and poetry worlds converged as poets from the New Jersey Renaissance collaborated with performers, poets and comedians from Manchester’s  Bards on the Rocks and The Laugh Attic for a riotous and raucous show.

“The Renaissance is an interesting bubble where you can do whatever you want on the stage. You can experiment. You can play,” said Rucci.

Smart, socially and politically poignant, and sometimes irreverent, the artists kept a captive crowd laughing and clapping—often chanting The Poetry Renaissance mantra: “One of us”— for an evening where everyone seemed to buy in.

“It’s the only pure form of democracy that I believe exists,” Rucci said. “It’s not corrupted by money, and once you get up on that stage, you become ‘one of us.’”

The show began with Rucci, a seasoned performance poet and touring artist, setting the tone. “F*** all those people who say we’re living wrong,” said Rucci, who has made the promotion of The Poetry Renaissance his raison d’être.

Manchester comic Kolbe Maloney then blended comedy with music, playing an original song about his mother’s finer attributes, titled “My Mom Is Hot.”

New Jersey poet Slayer Joe, a former construction worker, had the Queen City’s Catholic community clutching their rosaries, as he performed dressed as Jesus Christ, trailed by a woman carrying a bullwhip while packing a sizable female sex toy beneath his robe.

Comedian Katy Coughlin didn’t skip a beat, riffing on Slayer Joe’s act, proving that blasphemy can be funny when looked at from the right angle.

New Jersey poet Alex Ragsdale switched gears with some heartfelt pieces that addressed mental illness, calling for others to normalize those issues, often taboo, into the light.

But Walton seemed to sum up the evening’s collective ethos, imploring the crowd, and society at-large, to “Let us be poets.”

“We want everyone to walk away feeling like you’re part of something larger than yourself,” said Walton, who hosts the Bards on the Rocks series at the HopKnot in Manchester. “That is a fundamental human need, and our society doesn’t provide a lot of avenues for that.”

According to Rucci and Walton, this is the point of the Poetry Renaissance, a movement which will be the subject of an upcoming PBS documentary.

Filling the gaps that the slam poetry scene left while stemming from the folds of the pandemic, The Poetry Renaissance blends traditional verse written for the page with the performance of the piece on stage, using modern means of social media to spread the message.

“The poem is living, and we are the poem. The lifestyle itself is the poem,” Rucci said.

And some of the older, venerable poets have also taken notice.

“I’m impressed. They are people with the courage to live as poets, who are carrying the torch,” said Mark Lipman, a poet, artist and activist who will soon be named the U.S. Beat Poet Laureate. “They’re building a group, and their collective voices are being heard.”

But Walton seemed to simplify the movement. “It’s your ability to connect with people and tell stories. It’s being able to touch a heart,” he said.

You can catch up with Bards on the Rocks variety show at The HopKnot, 1000 Elm St., Manchester,  Aug. 21 at 7:30 p.m.