By: Ashley Chen
A poetry slam was held in the library on Jan. 29 to let students express themselves creatively as a part of creativity month, Leadership Student Jessica Aceves said. She knew that students on campus enjoyed poetry and wanted to give them a shot to portray it, she continued.
“I’m a senior, and in the last four years, I wasn’t able to see people express themselves freely like they would want to other than in their English classes, because they were forced to write a poem,” Aceves said. “So I wanted to create an event that allowed people to do it.”
Sophomore Nyla Choates presented the poem “The ‘N’ Word” by David Farrar. She chose that poem because she felt that not a lot of people knew the meaning behind the word, Choates said.
“I decided to participate [in the poetry slam] because I’ve been writing poetry for a long time, but I’ve never presented it before in front of people besides the talent show, so I thought it was a chance for me to actually show my work,” Choates said. “My goal was to try to get people to understand the meaning behind this word and why the connotation of it is just taken so differently, and how you can’t have a word and try to change the meaning when it’s already so set in stone.”
Although she was afraid of presenting, she felt welcomed after seeing everyone react in a positive way, Choates reflected. In the future, she hopes to participate in more poetry slams and try different topics, she added.
It has been a while since MHS held a poetry slam, Activities Director Joanna Butcher said. “[The poetry slam] is a chance to perform for a larger venue [than your English class] and to see if that might be something that you want to continue with,” Butcher said. “Because that leads you into ‘If I could do it here, maybe I’ll go to an open night mic at one of the cafes, and maybe I’ll feel more secure in being able to do something like that.’”
The poetry slam is an event that they would want to do again because not a lot of people get to express themselves freely without being censored, especially in our generation, Aceves said. “A lot of the time we’re being told ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, so I wanted to create this event to show that we know what we’re talking about and that we have our own voice,” Aceves said. “If it’s demanded, we can throw the event again, and I hope we get more sign ups next time when we do it.”