The bartender poetry book Pour Decisions – Notes From Behind the Bar brings the daily reality of hospitality into literature through the voice of longtime working bartender and former Poet Laureate Christopher Reilley. Written during real shifts, slow hours, and last calls, the collection documents exhaustion, repetition, humor, and fleeting intimacy without romanticizing nightlife.
Rather than treating the bar as spectacle, the poems focus on the work itself, where customers arrive unguarded, stories spill out, and bartenders quietly become witnesses. The bar appears as a frontline public space, a place where people tell the truth when the lights are low and someone is finally paying attention.
Early industry readers have responded strongly. One longtime bartender called the collection “funny, bruised, and honest as hell,” while another described it as “working-class poetry at its best.” The language remains unpretentious and direct, shaped by years of service rather than literary performance.
Reilley brings unusual authority to the project. Alongside decades behind the bar, he has served as Poet Laureate of Dedham, contributed to the Lunar Codex, and earned two Pushcart Prize nominations. That combination of craft and lived labor gives the book its voice and resonance inside and outside the hospitality world.
Released on February 15, 2026 by Big Table Publishing, Pour Decisions – Notes From Behind the Bar is available in paperback and eBook. The collection is well suited for bar readings, industry nights, podcasts, and hospitality-focused programming, offering a rare literary portrait of service work from the inside.
