Poetry Is pays its performers entirely from audience-sourced funding.

HIRE

POETRY IS – 
A SOUND EXPERIENCE

for your community event or venue!

We are always looking to collaborate and further engage our various communities in the Louisville area. Our founder, Eric Shoemaker, would be thrilled to speak with you about potential collaborative events including hosting Poetry Is: A Sound Experience, workshops on poetry and music, or a new idea we have yet to dream up.

Poetry Is makes a commitment to pay its members for their engagement. However, our pay schedule is flexible and we are always excited to partner with new people and organizations whether financial commitment is available or not. We’ll work with you to figure out the best option.

See examples of our types of work below. We’d love to engage your community!

-Eric
RobertEricShoemaker at gmail dot com

Our community engagement events have included:
2019
August, Surface Noise Records: performance by Poetry Is, three poets with prepared material
October, Portland Museum: performance by Poetry Is with background music before and after, set to an open festival-style party
November 16, Writer’s Block Festival with Louisville Literary Arts: hosted ekphrastic open workshop in the morning and improvisationally performed audience’s new poems in the afternoon, with music
November 21, Frazier Museum: performed original works based on the exhibit on Kentucky Music at the Frazier History Museum, with live music
November 23, Kleinhelter Gallery: cohosted evening reading on ekphrasis at art gallery
2020
Culbertson Mansion: poetry and music workshop and dialogue on drug use and abuse, along with themed Poetry Is performance

“Poetry Is – A Sound Experience” is a local performance collective uniting poets and musicians to create unique poetry “reading” experiences with improvisational music. Sometimes entirely unrehearsed, these music and poetry moments are unpredictable and joyful community-building sound-bites that transform the atmosphere of the poetry reading into a dynamic space.

This experience was conceived with the help of Sarabande Books and the Sarabande Young Professionals Board.

Poetry Is Productions brings poetry into all that we do. With our name borrowed from a poet’s manifesto, our goal is to create art with a broadened sense of the definition of what “Poetry Is.”

(For You. For Me. For All.)