Reader,
Hi again! I think that maybe it’s time I introduce myself. My name is Shelby, I am 20 years old, and I am from Los Angeles, California. I currently attend Barnard College in New York City, but this semester, I am studying abroad at DIS Copenhagen. Though I study English literature at Barnard, my core course at DIS will be Positive Psychology. I am also taking LGBTQIA* in Europe: Theories, Communities, and Spaces; Queer in Subversive Writers in European Cities; Creative Writing, and Photojournalism. I will be living in the Visual Arts Living and Learning Community and my favorite art forms to do are photography, poetry, dance, film, and embroidery. I can’t wait to take photos and videos as well as write about my experiences in a way that enhances them, rather than distracting me. Now that you have a formal introduction, here is the first story of the blog.
When I got up at that morning, I no longer intended on going. It was too far, too early, too long, too scary, and I had never even written a poem before. The workshop was probably full of seasoned poets spitting poems like those girls I saw on the internet. I could just read and get ahead on homework today instead. I was no poet.
It was almost time to leave and I was still in my pajamas, eating cereal and watching another slam poem on YouTube. I watched the first one I had ever watched, Andrea Gibson’s “I Sing the Body Electric Especially When My Powers Out.” The initial feeling it gave me had not been diminished with repetition. I immediately changed, grabbed a notebook, and got in my car.
There were two teachers and around twenty students, including two of the girls that I had watched online. I did well at the introduction game and Zip Zap Zop, but kept looking back at the same words on the chalkboard: “writing exercise.” I was a math person, a dancer, a listener, a photographer, among many other things in which I did not have to use words to express myself. I decided that the only option was to fake an illness during lunch, so I could get out before writing and sharing a poem. However, as I sat quietly contemplating my escape at the beginning of the lunch break, one of the teachers came over with the girl who I had watched on the internet. He said she used to be shy as well and tried to facilitate our conversation. While at the moment it felt a bit patronizing, I understand why he did it and am grateful for his compassion. I never viewed myself as someone who could easily have conversations with strangers, so I was surprised when we continued to talk after the teacher had left. But then lunch was over, my escape plot had been thwarted, and I had to write and share a poem with 20 others.
I spent the remainder of the time in the workshop listening to other people’s poems and building up my confidence for the inevitable reading; however, when it came to the last four of us, time had already run out. I was both relieved and disappointed. As I came to the workshops over the next few weeks, it became increasingly less stressful. I had friends there and spent lunch enjoying conversations with them. I was also hearing new poems that inspired me on a weekly-basis. However, because reading had been optional, I refrained from sharing my poetry.
On the fifth week, I finally volunteered to share. The poem was short and it wasn’t the most amazing piece that I have written, but I finally did it. People clapped, complimented the poem, gave me feedback, and then moved on. Nothing more, nothing less. Though I had done it this time and continued to do so each week, my loathing of those two words, taunting me from the chalkboard, did not seem to diminish.
The program was not just the Saturday drop-in class; they also had programs at schools all over Southern California. Their biggest event was the classic slam in which students from these high schools memorize and perform classic poems by poets like Audre Lorde, Walt Whitman, and Nikki Giovanni. They then write their own poems in response, which they memorize and perform afterwards. One day, the teachers announced that another poet would be coaching a scratch team for those who did not have the program at their school, and thus would otherwise not be able to participate. I did not let myself make excuses as I had the first class. I went to the info session and continued every week to stay one to two hours after the workshops to prepare for the slam with five other poets. Working in the small group with a short time frame made performing poems easier. The necessity outweighed my fear.
To be honest, I didn’t expect to make it past the first round. We had four months less than other teams and there was a point towards the end when certain teams were protesting our participation. This expectation made me forget my fears during the first poem. That, and it was a group poem. To be performing the poem with three friends felt like a culmination to the exciting and stressful three and half months that we had worked together. Misunderstanding the order of the rounds, I was surprised when my coach told me I’d be up next. I did not anticipate performing my individual poem for more than just my teammates. They called my name and I had no choice but to proceed to the mic.
As I performed the poem, it gave me the same kind of thrill that I hadn’t felt in the intimate group that I had been practicing with. It was scary and exciting and cathartic and empowering. People were snapping and mmming for my poem, for me. Just a few months before, I had told myself that I could never be a poet, let alone a spoken word poet. Yet here I was performing a poem about my father’s death, a topic that I had never spoken candidly about to neither friends nor family. I think the poem was the kind of closure I had not known that I needed until that moment.
Before seeing that first slam poem on YouTube, I had so many preconceived notions about what a poem was and who wrote one. But the workshops that I attended that year proved me wrong so many times over. Poetry is not just sonnets and old men, it is green hair and f**k the patriarchy pins; it is preferring Tupac to Whitman; it is saying yes of course I’m going to write a whole poem about period blood; it is trans is so beautiful; it is pointing out injustices and inequalities; it is celebrating just getting out of bed some days; it is young people that know that their voices matter; it is anyone who has a story to tell; it is my father died, but I am still here so I will not let something like fear stop me from living anymore.
