The Mischief Café: Poetry at Home With Toast (Buttered!) and Tea

Poetry is for life, not for ivory towers.

At Tweetspeak Poetry, it has been our delight to bring poetry to people, right where they are. To bring together established poets and poets taking first steps. And to invite those who thought they could never be a part of poetry to dip in without fear.

Because we strongly believe poetry is for life. Somewhere along the way, as part of our poetry merry-making, we opened The Mischief Café. It’s a “welcome” space on our website. But also somewhere along the line, it began to feel like more. Maybe The Mischief Café *should not just be virtual,* we started to think. And so it began. The idea of a traveling café, bringing poetry to people right where they are. In their own homes, amidst friends. With toast (buttered) and tea.

It’s an idea that’s still working itself out, but for now, sometimes a member of our Tweetspeak Poetry team will come to tea with poetry. And sometimes poetry lovers won’t want to wait for that. So they’ll make a little poetry mischief on their own.

This book describes the idea of a Mischief Cafe and how to run one, includes over thirty poems from T. S. Poetry Press titles (and from the conversation with fans that started the idea of this book), and has blank pages for new poems that café gatherers can write together over time using the 34 poem title prompts provided throughout.

Overall, the book gives you everything you need to run your own Mischief Cafe (or attend one): an explanation you can read aloud at your gathering, poems to share, prompts to inspire. Everything, that is, except the toast (buttered!) and tea.