A Brief History of Peoria's Literary Scene - Circa 2000
Three local women who each had a passion for the literary arts came up with similar ideas at nearly the same time. Nena Daugherty started the Nabi's House spoken word event, which was held for a few years at the Peoria Contemporary Arts Center, the precursor to the current and long-running Whisper and Shout.
The second woman of Peoria-area literary influence in the early aughts is Cheri Nordstrom. Cheri led the writers' group Wordsmiths by Night. WbN was a very active group, meeting regularly at Borders bookstore out at the Shoppes at Grand Prairie, which is currently a Home Goods.
I was the "artistic techie". In that time when the internet was young, and social media consisted of chat rooms and My Space pages, had my sights were optimistically focused on the opportunities that this new technology brought to rural high schoolers. So I set out to create an online gathering space that would be augmented by a monthly real-life gathering. Using Young Chicago Authors as a model, my goal was that the Aesthetic Underground would become the Peoria chapter of Youth Speaks.
Nena, Cheri, and I worked hard towards our separate but complimentary goals: Nena successfully created a space for black adult spoken-word events, Cheri oversaw the Wordsmiths and NaNoWriMo events in November, and I spent time getting in front of small groups of teens and mentoring their poetic endeavors. We all stayed in touch, encouraged one another, and attended one another's groups if we could.
The first Aesthetic Underground website was "born" in 1998. The website was successful, but the goal of having a vibrant team of teens participate in national youth poetry slams never manifested. However, the Aesthetic Underground found a Sunday afternoon home, also at the Peoria Contemporary Arts Center. It evolved into a coffee-house style poetry-centric space with featured events and musicians. I am forever grateful to Laini Greenstein and Cheri Nordstrom doing so much of the event organizing and planning. I did the easy part – the set up, tear down and serving MC. We gained a small following of appreciative regulars.
Laini moved East, Cheri and I's children became more involved in school, and eventually the Aesthetic Underground went back to being only a website. Then, for many years, it was simply a registered domain name, a $14.95 a year reminder of something I used to do.
