Poetry Brothel puts the bawd in bard

I am in the back room of the Backroom cocktail bar in New York, reclining on a fur-covered day bed. Next to me is a woman. She wears a leather corset and harem pants, like a gypsy girl from a fairytale. She is barefoot. In the dim candlelight, she asks what I’m in the mood for – something sexy? Something dark? I tell her what will please me, and she reads me a poem.

She calls herself a poetry whore, and I have paid for her company. For the next 10 minutes or so, she will read me her verses, converse with me, entertain me. Between sheer curtains I can see several other transactions unfolding around us, hear stanzas and lines being murmured in close quarters. Now and then, the madam passes unobtrusively through, keeping an eye on her rent boys and girls.

The madam is Stephanie Berger, who co-founded the Poetry Brothel with Nicholas Adamski in 2008. The two met while enrolled in the New School’s creative writing programme, bonding over a shared dissatisfaction with New York’s dry, highbrow poetry scene. They concocted the idea of a turn-of-the-century bordello – historically the realm of artists and miscreants – where writers could present their work in a more vibrant, visceral setting. They would dress up, invent alter egos, and sell not their bodies but their poems.

Prostitution and poetry, they claim, are not the uneasy bedfellows they might seem. “Sex work and poetry are two of the oldest professions,” says Berger. “Both are incredibly intimate acts that explore love, fantasy and the underside of people.”

Adamski agrees. “It’s all about intimacy. You can have pretty good sex or you can enjoy a poem without it. But if it connects to you intimately, it’s so much better.” And that’s what they sell at the Poetry Brothel, he says: an intimate experience of art with the artist who created it.

Each iteration of the brothel has a different theme, such as a masquerade ball or French New Wave, but the same basic structure. Well-dressed guests mingle over cocktails and live jazz. The madam introduces around half a dozen men and women selected for their writing prowess, personal charm and attractiveness (not to be confused with physical beauty, the organisers emphasise). They have names like Tennessee Pink and Cosette Chapiteau, and elaborate backstories involving circus runaways and paupers of royal lineage. Each one reads briefly, enticing potential clients with a taste of their talents.

The poets mingle with guests for the duration of the party, which is punctuated by burlesque performances and more public readings. At any time, a customer can request a private visitation with a poet of their choosing, either directly or through the staff. The poet escorts the customer to a quiet backroom boudoir for a one-on-one (and occasionally one-on-two) session. They’ll read two or three poems, answer questions, banter. In exchange, the customer offers a pre-purchased poker chip or two, to be cashed out at the end of the night.

The repositioning of poet as sex worker might raise some hackles, but has proven effective in attracting non-poetry audiences to readings. The house was packed at the most recent New York event on Sunday, and satellites have sprung up in Barcelona, Paris, London, Caracas and Auckland. Featured readers like Paul Muldoon (the New Yorker poetry editor and Pulitzer prize winner) and Deborah Landau (director of creative writing at NYU) have moonlighted as poetry whores, lending the enterprise legitimacy and gravitas.

For the likes of Muldoon and Landau, the poetry brothel is something fun and different for a few hours. But for the lesser-known poets, there is real creative and financial benefit to a receptive listener who can provide feedback and monetary compensation. Private readings cost $10 ($20 for a featured reader) and tipping is common; a poet can make a few hundred dollars on a lucrative night. It’s not enough to give up the day job, but the act of earning is itself significant. The difference between a hobbyist and a professional is, after all, a fiscal one.

As a customer, the commercial aspect is something I struggled with at first. Over the course of one evening I paid for five private readings. The first poet was earnest and vulnerable, and between poems told me about his former fiancee, his beloved grandmother, and his guitar (all named Edith). He revealed so much of himself to me that I was reluctant to cheapen our interaction with money. I soon learned to pay upfront, before the deeply personal exchange. I wondered if 19th-century patrons of the arts ever had this problem.

And yet, as the evening progressed, I began to enjoy my role as the john – appraising a poet from across the room, propositioning them at the bar, being led with a smile to a dark corner in the back room. There’s something appealing on both sides of that dynamic; it’s empowering to attain but also to be desired. “Is it like being hit on?” I asked my fourth reader, a wispy beauty in a white corset and floor-length skirt, pulled up on one side to reveal a dagger strapped to her thigh. She thought for a moment before she responded: “It’s better.”