Organizer Ben Brindise says featured poets, workshops will increase impact

By Elmer Ploetz

When Buffalo Poet Laureate Aitina Fareed-Cooke takes the microphone at the Wednesday Night Live poetry open mic at Caffé Aroma on Wednesday (July 23), it will mark a significant step in the evolution of the decades-old series.

The way organizers Benjamin Brindise and Justin Karcher see it, the twice-monthly poetry open mic they host needed to change or it was going to stagnate. So they’re bringing in featured readers, including some of Buffalo’s most significant poets and poets from out of town.

Funded by a Creative Impact grant through Arts Services Inc., they’re using the second reading of each month to put the spotlight on those poets. Fareed-Cooke (who also performs music as A.I. – The Anomoly and is the founder of Get Fokus’d Productions) will be followed by Jay Ward (poet laureate of Charlotte, N.C.) in August, Buffalo’s Ten Thousand in September, and Robin Lee Jordan (long-time Just Buffalo Literary Center Writing Center coordinator and director) in October.

In a recent interview, Brindise said he and Karcher decided “if he and I were going to continue to run it, we needed to offer something more than what the normal open mic has been. And so our thought was, OK, let’s bring in a headliner so that the average attendee can see like a higher quality of work on a regular basis. And then we’re going to add to that a monthly workshop that’s run by that featured writer, and that workshop will occur at the Caffé at Amy’s.

“So this whole project spans both venues, both to grow writers’ individual crafts by meeting these touring writers … and then getting to see them perform, and then being able to perform yourself via the open mic.”

The first free workshop will be with Fareed-Cooke at Caffé at Amy’s (3234 Main St., Buffalo) on July 30 at 6 p.m.

RELATED MEDIA: Excerpts from the June 5, 2025, open mic.

Brindise said the series owes a lot to the venues. He thanked Michaela and Jesse Schmidbauer, the operators of both Caffé Aroma and Caffé at Amy’s, for “their continued support and the freedom they give us to do what we need to do in order to keep the event running and to make sure that we have things like a sound system, that there’s enough space for people, that people feel comfortable coming. they’ve really gone above and beyond and supporting us and letting this be there.

“Because a lot of the popularity of the event comes down to where it is. It’s a place that people already know. It’s a place that they’re comfortable going to. … So we try as much as we can to support them back, which is a big reason that we decided to do the workshops at the Caffé at Amy’s.

Brindise was involved with running the Caffé Aroma open mic from 2017 to 2019 and now since 2022. He said he and Karcher have complementary personalities, which helps make things run.

“Justin and I started doing this mostly because we both understood that it wouldn’t be something that a single person could undertake, that it wouldn’t be consistent,” Brindise said. “There were going to be times where one of us wouldn’t be able to be there. And so the reason we kind of paired up was one, we wanted to see the community have a free-to-access event, that is going to consistently be there.

“And so once we kind of decided to pair up and do that, we kind of realized that he and I have complementary personalities. When I’m anxious and very high strung, he’s very relaxed and ready with a joke. And so it ends up kind of pairing very well together from a performance standpoint; as hosts, we can just act like ourselves. It ends up being kind of funny, because I’m awkward and, you know, he’s calm. So it works out.”

The two view the poetry open mic as a kind of community service to us.

“We try not to think about it too much more than that, and just make sure that it’s there for the people that want to find it,” he said.

For Brindise, it’s only part of his writing/poetry/performance activities. He frequently teaches workshops in schools and he recently did a project at the Connect Gallery in the Conventus Building (1001 Main St., Buffalo) in which he wrote flash fiction to go with five paintings by Kristin Brandt. It was built around the idea of innovation and called “Buffalo, a Home to Invention.”

“It was really nice to be asked,” Brindise said. “I had a ton of fun doing it, and it was nice to kind of think about the city and innovation.”

The exhibit opened June 6 and will be on display through ensuing months.