The History of Poets Day US

So some have asked where did I come up with Poets Day – well I didn’t. It is an English thing; a little obscure but so are many English things, like their love of warm beer and dislike of dental hygiene. Let me take you back to where my version of it started here in North Carolina.

It was a warm summers Friday (actually I have no clue what the weather was or the season) and I was pretending to be a Sales Engineer to help a buddy of mine, we will call him Tommy V, close a deal. On the way back from the home of the Demon Deacons I looked at the clock, and seeing it was about 1 hour from quitting time (which at the time was 5:30pm) I suggested that we not return to our place of employment, but rather stop at a nearby establishment for the consuming of alcoholic beverages. I believe my exact phrasing was ‘Fuck going back to work, it’s Poets Day, lets have a beer’ and thus Poets Day was brought to NC. Well I had to explain what is was first, but I think Tommy bought into the concept as soon as beer was mentioned.

Around that time the brilliant minds that owned the company I was working for decided it would be a fantastic idea to have me run the sales team for a while – this meant I could actually institute the Poets Day philosophy (well at least my version of it – work hard, play hard) amongst the sales team. I am not sure if this was the reason that I got put in charge – might have been to sell stuff – but either way it worked :)  So every Friday we would leave work earlier than usual (well I would) and pop up the road for an adult beverage.

God this blog is boring – usually my stories are funnier than this crap. Oh well, let’s just finish this stupid thing.  Fuck me, long story short please.

We purloined the skills of Sledge to create the logo and then I made some golf shirts (so we could wear them to work) and T Shirts with the logo front and back and the classic line from the original Batman movie ‘They may be drinkers Robin, but they’re still human beings’ on the back (I had someone say they loved my shirt just the other week).  Poets Day grew in popularity at work (who doesn’t want to bail a little earlier) and the shirts sold out pretty quickly. Even the bosses knew about it and would question why I was at work after 5pm on Fridays – that didn’t happen often obviously.

I built a crappy website (since discarded) then in March 2010 I decided to start a blog, not sure why but there might have been inspiration from the best actor I know – Jonno Roberts – and yes I do know him :). The amount of posts at the time were a direct relation to my sex life, infrequently. The increased postings recently are due to my move back to an office job and the urgings of the floppy haired one who we shall call Brad (as that is his name) and the fact that, well, it is a bit of fun.

So what does the future hold for the US chapter of the Poets Day doctrine?

Well, with increased posts there is an increased demand for new Poets Day shirts (at least 2 people have asked me) so I will shortly redo the shirts and have them available for purchase (yes you have to pay me this time Tommy). I will endeavor to find the inspiration to write the blog on a regular basis and I will continue to enjoy life :)

If you want to view some of the older posts just go back on the blog by year  - some of them were half decent and some were even better than that.

So work hard, play hard and earn your inspiration.

Happy Poets Day  - although this is technically POETAPH day here in the US of Freedom :)

Piss off early, tomorrow’s a public holiday   :)