Landmark Mercury Cafe closes as its slam poetry team represents Colorado at regionals

By Madeleine Lebovic, Clara Normand, and Shaundrea Roberts

Note: The mini-documentary first appeared on Rocky Mountain PBS as a result of a partnership with journalism students at the University of Denver

DENVER, Colo. – Since 1975, The Mercury Café has been more than a local venue. It has been a cultural landmark, an oasis of expression where artists of all backgrounds gather, create and perform.

The cafe, known to locals simply as The Merc, is home to Colorado’s only weekly poetry slam. Poets step onstage each Sunday night, offer three-minute performances, and let five random audience members decide the evening’s winner.

Five of these poets headed towards a larger stage.

The Mercury Poetry Slam team represented Colorado at the regional Chicharra Poetry Slam Festival in Albuquerque, NM, March 20-22. It was the first time since 2018 that a competitively selected Colorado team traveled to regionals–and the last time a team ever represents the Mercury Café.

In April 2025, the Mercury Cafe closed and reopened under new ownership as The Pearl. For the poets who call the space home, this transition marks the closing of a 50-year chapter.

A Melting Pot of Poets

For decades, The Mercury Cafe has welcomed poets of all backgrounds, offering them not just a microphone but an extended community beyond its walls.

That legacy includes current Colorado poet laureate Andrea Gibson, a former Mercury Slam team member whose presence in the performance poetry world left a lasting impact. Fellow poet Stone, a current Mercury Slam member, recalled Gibson being the first nonbinary person they encountered.

“To find out that they’re local to Denver and they were on this very team that now I’m on,” they explained. “It’s been really important to me for my personal growth and my personal journey.”

Both Stone and Mercury Slam member Ryan Boyland spent their childhoods moving from place to place, but have found a home in Denver for now. Boyland, an emergency room resident doctor, has been slamming at The Merc for two years.

Boyland first fell into slam poetry because of the adrenaline rush of performing.

“There’s a picture of me out there somewhere in the ether, also with no haircut, and a suit that’s like two sizes too big, shaking like a leaf in front of a crowd” he says as he recalls how it then morphed into a standing ovation after finishing his poem. “I think that for a long time that was the feeling that I was chasing whenever I got up in front of a mic.”

Now, poetry helps him balance what he describes as the “emotional whiplash” of working in an emergency department. He plans to bring poems on that experience to regionals in Albuquerque, where team member Matthew Brown grew up.

Brown got his slam start in high school, where the town practiced “intergenerational poetry.” Veterans of poetry slam teams came into local schools to perform and engage younger students.

“To see emcees and artists of color talk about poverty and addiction in a way that was poetic and beautiful—it blew the roof off of my head,” he shared. “I didn’t know that you were allowed to do that.”

Brown also remembers Denver poets – including those from Mercury Slam– coming to Albuquerque for regionals. Feeling connected to them in art kindled a childhood dream of moving to Colorado and being on a Denver team.

Fifteen years later, his dream has come true.

“To be on the Mercury Team with all of these incredible writers—childhood Matthew would be doing backflips right now,” Brown smiled. “He would be over the moon.”

A Poetry Scene Reboot

Denver has historically been Colorado’s hub for slam poetry. It used to field two nationally competitive slam teams, Slam Nuba and Mercury Poetry Slam. Relics of this history still hang on the walls of The Merc, serving as reminders of past triumphs like Mercury Slam’s victory at the 2006 National Poetry Slam and a fourth-place finish in 2014.

But in 2018, Poetry Slam Inc., the organization running the National Poetry Slam, dissolved, sending ripples through the slam poetry community. The pandemic only deepened the impact. Colorado Springs and Slam Nuba have not fielded traveling teams since. While The Merc eventually revived its weekly poetry slams, other local slams dwindled to monthly gatherings.

The Mercury Slam team’s participation at the Chicharra Poetry Festival marks Colorado’s return to the competitive slam poetry stage.

To qualify, poets had to earn 14 points during the July–November season by performing in weekly slams, hosting, serving as ‘grand heckler’ (scorekeeper), or attending poetry workshops. Poets with enough points competed in a Grand Slam on December 13th, 2024, where the top five scorers earned their spot on the team.

Leaders in the poetry community plan to continue a yearly Grand Slam and field a competitive team for the foreseeable future. Whether the team name will change now that the Mercury Cafe has closed is yet to be decided.

For now, the new owners of The Pearl have promised the poetry community the continuation of their weekly slams in the venue. Thus, the ritual remains: each Sunday night, poets line up for one of eight spots onstage and the slam is in full swing to win the “fame and glory of a Sunday night”—and $50 cash.

But the true prize is something deeper: the chance to be part of a community, to leave a creative legacy and to be heard.

For poets like Stone, this is most important, “Being heard is therapy.”