Bustling conversations sweep around the delicately lit greenhouse as faces, old and young, find their place among the maze of plants.
A single woven chair rests at the front of the crowd, a towering microphone gently laid beside it, illuminated by the shining lights, awaiting the night’s first reader.
As the sea of people rush to find their seats, the event’s host, Grace Coy, steps up to the podium.
The Last Monday Reading Series on Jan. 27, in the greenhouses combining Kentucky Native Cafe and Michler’s Florist, hosted Kentucky poets Dorian Hairston and George Ella Lyon to speak at the event.
The greenhouse’s guests step away from their busy lives into a serene and quiet environment where time seems to slow down, Coy, Michler’s Florist office manager and event host, said.
“The Ficus, the figs and the cascading ferns are lively participants in our conversation. Maybe they have tales of their own, of their tropical origins and they share with us how they delight in our laughter and our applause,” Coy said. “ They know, as we know, that this is a place to share stories.”
Coy brought the sea of people into a swift meditation in preparation for the poets, inviting the crowd to visualize they were outside the world, into a raw new realm, allowing genuine connections for just one night.
After a moment of deafening silence, the crowd’s murmur returned, allowing the first poet Dorian Hairston to enter, surrounded by a halo of light from the stage lights.
Frederick Douglass High School English teacher by day, poet by night, Hairston creates his work by combining his passion for giving a voice to the voiceless with poetry.
“My biggest responsibility is to share stories, particularly those folks who might not have their story placed in the foreground,” Hairston said.
Taking these stories and the current political movement, Hairston hopes young people can read his poetry and see themselves, see the people who are often forgotten by the media.
In his second reading, Hairston was influenced by the recent non-traditional instruction days and the subsequent uproar of angry parents after their children were told to stay home.
Repeating lines surrounding tax payers money and the working class, whom Hairston mentions repeatedly throughout his poetry, says is his biggest influence.
“We built this country and we built this country; we’re the ones who should reap its benefits,” Hairston said. “It should be the people who put their sweat and blood into building these monuments, these buildings, these roads, these institutions— those are the people that should be rewarded.”
Taking the untold stories of the working class, Hairston wrote his novel “Pretend the Ball Is Named Jim Crow” surrounding baseball player Josh Gibson.
Gibson was an African American baseball player, before the time of Jackie Robinson, who lost his wife at 19 years old.
Hairston takes all perspectives on Gibson’s life, from his son to his late wife, telling Gibson’s untold story.
Baseball was ever-present in Hairston’s life, allowing him to combine his love for the game with storytelling to create the novel.
“The beautiful thing about baseball is how slow it is. I think that’s really good for us as a society,” Hairston said.
As a former baseball player himself, Hairston said it is vital to keep the game alive since baseball mirrors life constantly due to its slow pace.
The final chapter of the novel and Hairston’s final reading was a letter from him to Gibson—a letter of hope for all the societal progress for African Americans in sports made since Gibson’s passing in 1947.
An uproar of claps suddenly overcame the crowd as Hairston performed his final words.
These claps continued, transitioning into a welcome for the next poet, George Ella Lyon.
Lyon shuffled her way up to the spotlight to tell tales of her life’s journey.
Lyon recalls stories of her life, bringing the crowd along with her through decades of Kentucky history and allowing them to see the world through her eyes.
The final piece Lyon spoke was an excerpt from her memoir “Don’t You Remember?” In it, she recalls memories from her early childhood from another life as a school teacher in upstate New York.
As her family drove through the unknown, windy roads of upstate New York, 5-year-old Lyon told her father to honk as they entered the underpass.
Scared and confused, her father said there was no underpass in sight, but she confidently told her father about the underpass that would appear in a couple of miles and sure enough, the underpass came into view after the next turn.
Lyon then describes landmarks and locations throughout the town, from which she had never been but seemed to know all the same. She left the crowd with one final question: “Don’t you remember?”
She then stepped away from the limelight and the crowd’s roar got louder and louder, engulfing the small greenhouse.
As the artistic community in Lexington continues to grow, Lyon says she wants to continue reaching as many artists as possible because art is an accessible community with shared values.
Art is a bond that knits so many people together, Lyon said. She explained that creating spaces where a community can come together and bond over all types of art, whether music, writing or paintings, is essential for it to thrive.
“Art nourishes your inner life and without your inner life, you’re lost,” Lyon said.
Lyon combines the thoughts in her head with the feelings in her heart to create a single message whenever she thinks about her writing.
“You find your voice right between your heart and your head,” Lyon said.
Before the event started, Lyon made an effort to speak to as many of the audience members as she could.
“It wasn’t easy for some of them to be here. They are older than me, they have mobility issues, but here they are because of art itself,” Lyon said.
These events are crucial to Lyon as a poet and as a person. She said we strengthen one another by sharing our art, especially in the modern day when we are so often censored.
“We live in a culture that wants us to be numb, doesn’t want us to feel deeply, it doesn’t want us to be passionate and in some cases, especially this political moment, it wants us to be silent,” Lyon said.