**🌺 Poetry Under the Palms: Open Mic at the Tiki by the Pool**

**An evening of verse, vulnerability, and vibe—beneath the stars and beside the water.**

Join us for a one-of-a-kind **Open Mic Poetry Night**, hosted in the heart of the neighborhood—but unlike anything you’ve felt before.

Nestled behind the house, past the garden gate and into a little backyard oasis, we’re opening up the **Tiki by the Pool** for an evening of raw words, slow cocktails, and community fire. There’s **spacious seating**, **ambient lighting**, and just enough breeze in the palms to carry your words into the night.

***

🎤 **What to Expect:**
• A relaxed open mic—poets, spoken word artists, storytellers, first-timers, and quiet sharers all welcome
• No pressure, no pretension—just a mic, a vibe, and space to speak
• BYOBeverage (and bring a blanket or chair if you want to post up extra cozy)
• Light snacks & candles provided
• You don’t have to read to attend—**good listeners are half the magic**

***

📍 **Where:** Behind Colin's house, poolside at the Tiki (address shared upon RSVP)
🗓️ **When:** [April 12/7:00] – Doors open at 6:30pm, mic starts at 7:00pm
🌒 **Vibe:** Low-key. Soul-deep. Tropical and true.

Whether you’ve got a poem in your pocket, a memory to let go of, or just want to hear what it sounds like when a community breathes together through art—**this night is for you**.

Come write. Come listen. Come feel something.

🎤💫🌴

Colin Dawson

Las Vegas Poetic Readings Meetup Group

eugeneant

Writing

Poetry Reading

Poetry

Spoken Word

Open Mic

Poets

Creative Writing

Tara

Jade Pham

Gina

Mary

Kayla Holt

**Colin Dawson** is a Las Vegas-based poet whose body of work is rapidly earning him recognition as one of the most emotionally resonant and spiritually urgent voices of his generation. With **seven completed poetry collections**—each distinct in tone, theme, and internal weather—Dawson writes with a rare kind of lucidity, crafting poems that are as searing as they are tender, as precise as they are transcendent.




At the center of his growing reputation is his forthcoming debut, ***Waterloo Dawn***—a collection that reads like a sacred rupture. Though unpublished at present, *Waterloo Dawn* is already being compared to the early, devastating brilliance of **Sylvia Plath**, the metaphysical intensity of **John Donne**, the spiritual lyricism of **Rainer Maria Rilke**, and the modern vulnerability of **Ocean Vuong**. And yet, Dawson’s voice is unmistakably his own—marked by a directness that feels intimate, unfiltered, and fiercely alive.

***




**📚 Seven Books, One Arc of Transformation**




Colin Dawson’s seven poetry manuscripts trace a deeply human arc—moving from the raw wounds of addiction, grief, spiritual exile, and mental illness into a hard-won space of clarity, connection, and poetic resurrection. Each book is a stage in a kind of interior pilgrimage:
1. **Waterloo Dawn** – The emotional epicenter. A map of grief and survival.
2. **Some Nights Last Forever** – Dark love, spiritual mourning, and the raw rituals of memory.
3. **I’d Wish for Death Together** – A devastating meditation on romantic loss and eternal presence.
4. **Crossroads** – A prayer inside an ash cloud. A reckoning with mortality and divine silence.
5. **Walking Through the Rain** – Trauma as testimony. Addiction, withdrawal, and grace.
6. **Saltwater Sparrows** – Dreamlike, lyrical, and surreal. A poet at the edge of memory.
7. **Meditation Point** – A quiet return to the ruins. Reflective, spare, haunted by stillness.

***




**🌅 Why Waterloo Dawn Matters**




*Waterloo Dawn* is not a collection that asks to be read—it demands to be *felt*. The poems are steeped in emotional truth, each one a kind of prayer, elegy, or whispered confession. Dawson doesn’t hide behind metaphor. He uses it to walk right up to the reader and say, *“I was there. You might have been too. Let’s not lie about it.”*




> *“I lived like a razor blade at dawn / nodding into new gray light / with last night’s eyes.”*





These lines don’t just speak to trauma—they **give it form**, **make it sacred**, and **hold space for its transformation**. That’s what makes *Waterloo Dawn* so resonant—not only for general readers navigating their own losses, but for critics and scholars who recognize what it takes to write this cleanly from places most writers only gesture toward.

***




**✍️ Style, Voice, and Comparisons**




Dawson’s poetic style is distinctive:
• **Formally loose but rhythmically measured**—every line break feels intentional.
• **Emotionally surgical**—he never overwrites; he lands.
• **Spiritually wounded, yet lucid**—his work lives in the tension between belief and absence.




His closest literary kin might be:
• **Sylvia Plath**, for emotional voltage and psychic precision
• **Ocean Vuong**, for sensuality, vulnerability, and memory as fluid truth
• **Rainer Maria Rilke**, for spiritual urgency and metaphysical reach
• **Anne Carson**, for philosophical minimalism (in later collections)
• **John Donne**, for sacred eroticism and deathward intimacy




But Dawson is not a fusion of these voices—he is *in conversation* with them. His originality lies in his ability to **channel rawness into clarity**, to write poems that feel like confessions wrapped in scripture.

***




**🕯️ Likely Legacy & Critical Impact**




Upon publication, *Waterloo Dawn* is poised to become a landmark collection of modern American poetry—one that will live on not just in MFA classrooms and literary magazines, but in the minds of those navigating the private weather of grief, recovery, and rebirth.




Colin Dawson is not writing toward literary fame—he’s writing toward **emotional necessity**, which is precisely what makes his work *so enduring*. His poetry will likely be:
• **Taught in courses on trauma literature, grief poetics, and contemporary confession**
• **Cited in academic work on spirituality and post-addiction writing**
• **Read aloud in quiet rooms by people trying to survive something**




His legacy will be one of radical intimacy, quiet courage, and the belief that poetry still matters in moments when nothing else does.

Poetry Open Mic Under the Stars, Next to the Bar, at the Tiki

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Poetry Open Mic Under the Stars, Next to the Bar, at the Tiki

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