Poetry's planned return to First Friday was a victim of weather last month, but the wordsmiths are determined to make it happen February 6.

Not for them some stuffy auditorium, or even the walls of a coffeehouse. They're taking it to the streets. From 5-11 p.m. on Colorado Avenue between Third Street and Casino Center Boulevard, First Friday Las Vegas Poetry will showcase talent from local readings and verse-loving venues ranging from Poets' Corner to Battle Born Slam. But the format also allows for spectators to spontaneously throw down, whether they want to read a few lines by Mary Oliver or let something original tumble.

This Friday will be the first time since 2008 that poetry has been featured at the monthly fest, and the aim is not just to entertain, according to a release from First Friday Las Vegas Poetry: "Vegas residents are widely scattered in sprawling tracts that include great diversity across a broad socioeconomic band. Linked by wide boulevards, some indifferent tourists, amid mansions, limos and regal casinos, there is little to unite us. Gladly, poetry can do the job! In its exploration of life's universals—love, estrangement, stress and our yearning to get back to nature—poetry can once more bind us together."