Creating Space | Dayton Poetry Slam welcomes all
- Published: February 20, 2025
CREATING SPACE: This is the first in a profile and interview series from the perspective of News columnist Iden Crockett that aims to highlight people who work in the arts in the Miami Valley, with a focus on those who create space for women, BIPOC and queer creatives.
It is 6 p.m. on a Sunday — maybe the last warm Sunday evening of 2024. In one hour, something magical happens here at the Yellow Cab Tavern in downtown Dayton. At 7 p.m., Lincoln Schreiber and associates will step to the mic and announce the commencement of another Dayton Poetry Slam.
It is a ritual that Lincoln Schreiber — Link to his friends — has overseen for more than two decades. The Dayton Poetry Slam, or DPS, is Ohio’s longest continuously running poetry slam. Founded in 1999 by Bill Abbott, it was taken over by Schreiber in 2003, and as he will go on to tell me, he “just ran with it” — even through the pandemic lockdown, via Zoom.
Tonight I will hear from people 30 years older than me and 30 years younger than me. I will hear from people in wheelchairs, white people, BIPOC people, cisgender, transgender, straight, queer. I will cry. I will laugh. I will feel helpless and outraged, aroused, hopeful, even nostalgic. I will sit in awkward silence, not understanding exactly how I feel, but knowing that — here at least, in this place, for these next three hours —I can be who I am and safe to feel how I feel.
An hour before showtime, Schreiber and I are seated in high chairs on the patio. Music is spilling out of the Yellow Cab’s signature bay doors, opened to take advantage of the last of the season’s warm nights.
Schreiber is a big dude — the cuddly kind of big dude. He is rocking his signature T-shirt/shorts/fedora combo. Imagine your friend’s dad — the awesome one that you wish had been yours. Now imagine that plus Indiana Jones. And also a teddy bear. That’s Schreiber.
For 21 of his 45 years, Schreiber — along with a rotating cast of assistants — has been building the DPS into what it is today. The current cast of characters responsible for the day-to-day of the DPS include Ayesha Alexander, Johnathon Gallienne and Morgan McGee — each of whom add their own talents and points of view to the operation. It is a task that Schreiber assures me is a labor of love. I believe him.
Ed. Note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Iden Crockett: How did you get involved with [DPS] before you were running it?
Link Schreiber: I went to University of Dayton for their LitFest, and they had this gigantic slam — I was hooked immediately right then. I started going to the poetry slams here in Dayton and [DPS founder] Bill [Abbott] was like, “Hey I have to move away. Who wants to run the show?”
Nobody was stepping up. I said, “I will do it until we find somebody else.”
Crockett: Famous last words.
Schreiber: Sucker! Yep! But this, actually this is a joy. This has been the most constant joy in my life, in all honesty, for 21 years now.
Crockett: The one thing that strikes me about this place is how diverse a group of poets you have here. And that is really what I wanted to talk to you about, because it seems to be a remarkable thing that you have created here. Did you create it? Was it this diverse when you started going?
Schreiber: We just treat everybody that walks in the door with love, and as a person. Even if the poem is horrible, they still get love on our stage. They still get applauded. They still get feedback. Everybody’s welcome. … I would like to think we created a safe place and everybody found us. We try to just make it warm and inviting for anybody to just come in. … Where I was raised in Springfield, it was … a very diverse neighborhood, so I’ve learned a lot about how not to be an idiot as much as I can.
Crockett: You talked about growing up in a diverse place. You are straight, cis, white. I’ve been in a lot of spaces that are run, created or administered by people like that. They value diversity, and they want diversity, but it ends up feeling forced and unnatural. How do you keep it from being that?
Schreiber: I’ve got people who keep me in check, like Ayesha, Jonathan and Morgan. … I was, and still am, pretty close with [poet and former president of the nonprofit Poetry Slam Inc.] Scott Woods up in Columbus. [His advice] was: “Just remember the show is not about you.” And that’s what I’ve always tried to maintain with this. … This is an open microphone for anyone who wants to use it.
Crockett: A lot of different minority groups come here. People within those groups come here, and whether they’re queer people, people of color, or whatever, a lot of the poetry they read has to do with them navigating the world in opposition to white men. Is that ever difficult for you? Is it difficult, as a white man, to navigate that?
Schreiber: I feel badly for what, as a culture, white men have done to people. … But, I also have to keep in mind that it is this person’s experience. … If they allow it, you hug them. You tell them, “I’m sorry,” and you try to work together to find different ways forward. … I’ve seen it first-hand with the cops going after the Black people in my neighborhood. You had a lot of that going on and you learn pretty quickly that life isn’t fair. [Fairness] is something I’ve tried to maintain with this show. It doesn’t matter who you are coming into [DPS]. We try to welcome everybody.
Crockett: I have always wondered what it’s like. I’ve listened to a lot of these poems, and no one has ever gone up there to read a five-minute heated monologue about their bad experience with Black trans women. Nobody has ever done that. I always wondered, is that difficult after a while?
Schreiber: No. I don’t think it’s difficult, because that person is speaking their truth. That person is speaking their experience. All I can do is sit here and go … “What else can we do to make things more inviting?”
Crockett: Obviously this does something for the poetry community, but for the Dayton area at large, do you think that having a space for all of these different people to come and work on their craft of poetry benefits anyone outside of those individuals or that small community?
Schreiber: I do think that. People can come here and share anything. You know, we’ve had people come out [as queer] on stage before. We’ve had people declare their gender identity on stage. We’ve had people declare liberation from family. We’ve had a lot of firsts. We’ve had engagements on stage. We’ve had birth announcements on stage.
Crockett: Why do you think it’s important for individuals to have spaces to express themselves creatively?
Schreiber: I think that’s the problem with a lot of folks. They just bottle it up. I think … it’s very freeing to get those words out, to get those things out into the ether. I think that is the service we’ve always offered. We’ve offered a microphone, and we’ve allowed you to talk. We’ve allowed you to get it out.
Crockett: What advice would you give to a person who wanted to create a space for people to express themselves?
Schreiber: Figure out where. That’s one of the biggest things. [You’ve] got to find the right spot. We wouldn’t be as diverse, I don’t think, if Yellow Cab wasn’t already such a welcoming, diverse venue to begin with. … You have to look at the venue [and] you have to make sure that it’s not about you. You are a part of the show, but remember that you are not the show. When people see that genuineness … that’s what draws more and more people.
Crockett: Last thing. Give me a slam moment that made you think to yourself, “This is why I do it.”
Schreiber: Honestly, it’s every time someone gets up there for the first time. Whether it’s an audience member that has sat here for ages that is just now getting on stage, or a teenager, or someone like yourself — somebody who is re-identifying themselves, reclaiming their own identity, finding who they really are — when they get up on that mic for the first time, they’re like “Oh my God. This is what I’ve been missing.” That’s what it is every time. …You’ll get a brand new person in here, and it doesn’t matter if you never see them again; you gave them that opportunity and they just shine for that moment. That’s them in that spotlight and we gave that to them. That’s the best thing ever — when we can do that for them.
Cars have been steadily filing into the parking lot. The bar has been steadily filling with poets and poetry lovers. The background sound has shifted key from jukebox to greetings — a chorus of “How you been”s and “Long time, no see”s with a rhythm all its own. It is nearly 7 — time for Schreiber to go start the show. I thank him for his time. He gives me a giant hug and tells me it was a joy. I believe him.
*The author is an artist and writer. She lives in Yellow Springs with her wife and three children. You can follow her work at mynameisiden.com.
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