Urban Nature Open Mic at Botanic Gardens
Kamila Kinyon

Despite rain and snow, the Urban Nature Open Mic at the Denver Botanic Gardens was a big success, with participants and audience both from DU and the community. All readers and speakers received plants from Karen Benson. The event began with writing program lecturer Alba Newmanns poem about the hill of Petrin above Prague. Viewing cut flowers from the famous rose garden, Alba related the lyrical end of a day where everything elsewas sour/fined by metro police/frowned upon by stodgy tourists This resonated with my own memories of visiting my native city Prague, where the best and worst of everything often merges in a panoply of contradictions. The theme of urban nature continued in Avechaials poems about Denver. Air pollution, shrouding the city in a cloud of smog and preventing views of the mountains, coexists with the vibrant energy of the city. Shawn Huelle, writing contest award winner, added a touch of surrealism with a short story about tree branches coming alive in the wind. Vivid contrasts between the manmade and the natural continued as a thematic thread throughout the evening. One of my favorites was a humorous poem about a green house whose glaring shade of green not muddy or plant greenugly green appalls the author, as it clashes with the comparative brown of the grass. The program encompassed both readers and poetry slam performers. Len, organizer of poetry slams at Mercury Caf, improvised on the theme of urban versus non-urban environments. We leave the city in order to be able to return and fight the power. Mary Ann Stratton improvised a performance about experiences ranging from the teaching of junior high thirty-two desks filled with liquid mercury to teenage sexual disenchantment over a marijuana joint. The program ended with a performance by slam artist Nitche Ward. This was her first performance and first time out of the house since the birth of her baby boy. Nitche gave a vibrant performance, including a new piece composed for her child, about responsible sex education and about the projected experiences of growing up in a lesbian family. Nitche also performed some of her classic pieces, such as a critique of fairytales and Barbie, in their dismal influence on child psychology. After ending on this note and returning home, I was asked by my four-year old daughter when her wishes would come true and she could have a new crown, glittering shoes, and a shining silk party dress. I told her wed at least take her for a haircut tomorrow.

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