The regular Saturday Readings a the Cherry Tree Hotel have been part of the 2023 Sonic Poetry Festival. On the final Saturday of the Festival Cherry Poets will feature Sound Poets at the Cherry Tree: poetry by Angela Costi and Peter Davis performed with Soundscapes and Music. Click here for details.

So Dan Poets started in Carlton, Victoria at the Dan O’Connell Hotel in early 1994. A conversation between Melbourne’s infamous, iconic, spiky black cowboy punk poet Grant McCracken and publican Kevin Webb lead to Australia’s longest running weekly poetry gig. The list of names of the various convenors that hosted Dan Poets and its successor Cherry Poets is long, but we’ll get through it together.

Kevin took over from Grant when he went to Texas. Ted Lord took it from there for many years, through many heart attacks until his passing. Ted was assisted by co-hosts Amanda Britton, Michelle Lehane, Justin Godden and Cam Black, and sound persons Baz Daly and Michael Reynolds. Cam took it over from Ted as his health was declining, bringing in Libby Charlton as co-host. This continued until Cam decided that poets smell funny and Libby took over the reins, with a group consisting of Anne Bowman, Fiona Stuart, Norman Jensen and Steve Smart. A little while later they were joined by Tim Train after Fiona left to race hot air balloons. Maybe.
All was peaceful in the land of Dan for a while, with good crowds, great features and a very lovely, high quality illustrated Dan Poets Anthology; with the jam-packedest launch you could imagine. Libby sang, and all had a fine time.

And then doom fell. The pandemic shut everything down for a while, and as we were coming out of one the the several Melbourne lockdowns the news came through The Dan O’Connell Hotel was no more. We were going back into the world outside with no Saturday poetry venue.

Tim took off running trying to find a new venue close by, but times were difficult and venues were tough to secure.

And then word came from our old pal and former Dan manager Toby Kingsley. ‘Hear you poets are looking for a venue? Y’know I run a pub in Cremorne, why not come here!’ And after a quick Google to figure out where exactly the hell Cremorne was (it’s pretty much South Richmond), we happily took him up on his offer. Yep, Toby saved Christmas.

The organising group at that point was Anne, Norman, Smarty and Tim.

Of course the pandemic was in no way done with us yet. Some of the gigs went back to online Zoom land, and for a while we were outdoors just across from the pub with milk crates when people weren’t able to be inside venues… we were here and there, but the gig kept going throughout.

After a while Anne and Norman decided to take a break for a while and Tim and Steve muddled along as best they could, before being joined by Paula Darvas in mid 2023. Paula brings her own excellent energy to the gig and the future looks pretty good. Which brings us to the present.

So what is it, this Dan/Cherry Poets? The gig runs every Saturday arvo, featuring an eclectic range of poets and sometimes singers, musos and people we can’t quite define but we love nonetheless. The format is pretty simple – open mic / feature poet’s 1st set / break / open mic / 2nd feature set / end of open mic / drinks / drinks. Occasionally we play a little fast and loose with the format but that’s the basic gist. With the kind assistance of the pub we are able to pay the featured poets, who are also encouraged to sell their wares in order to keep them in the style to which they have (*cough*) become accustomed.

 – Steve Smart

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