Performers & Speakers 

Location: Taylor, MI

Desc: Poetry / Spoken Word 

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If Matthew Dickman and Pablo Neruda conceived a child while crowdsurfing at a punk show and then raised the newborn in one of those bio tubes from a sci-fi movie, amalgamating the pseudo-amniotic-fluid from church, Chipotle, and pop culture, then you’d have something akin to Chris Bernstorf’s poetry. Begun as a passion project while studying creative writing at Lycoming College, Bernstorf’s poetry has since taken him to 48 states and 6 other countries. He has clocked in over 500 performances in every imaginable space, from living rooms to a micronation to bars to churches to a converted Soviet airfield to art spaces to bathrooms. In fact, there’s at least a 40% chance he and his wife are sleeping on your floor/couch tonight. Whether it’s a post-rock length journey or a shout-along or something in between, a belief in love at the bottom unites all of his poems. Bernstorf's poems have found a home in the ears of everyone from middle schoolers to college students to middle-aged moms, proving at every turn that the ultimate classification for his poems is simply poetry for people.