Second Literary Event: Poetry Out Loud

I don't know why I keep finding myself at poetry events. I don't particularly enjoy much poetry, and am very skeptical of most modern poetry. This is probably because I can't tell good modern poetry from bad modern poetry, and so am naturally suspicious.

Anyway, I'm very glad that I went to this event, because it far surpassed my expectations. As someone who gets bored and distracted easily, it's difficult for me to read poetry, especially long poetry (Walt Whitman is an obvious culprit.) As far as I'm usually concerned, poetry consists solely of words on a page, ink on paper. I read them, they have meaning, and sometimes they even inspire pictures in my imagination. Sometimes, a certain phrase will linger in my head. But despite taking Poetry and Poetics, I must admit I'd never before thought of poetry being a different type of literary art - one in the vein of performance. So when I sat down in the Terrace Room on Thursday, I guess I was expecting performances of neatly recited poetry. Contestants standing with clasped hands, upright posture, and a polite smile on their face. I expected bland recitations, an effect of words hammered to over-familiarity through the process of memorization.

I should have known better. My experiences of poetry recitations in Poetry and Poetics section were one thing; Poetry Out Loud were quite another.

The first performance was of excerpts from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself". Figures. The poem that I had barely managed to finish skimming out of boredom kicked off the contest. But the grad student who performed spoke with emotion, and with feeling. His intensity surprised me, as he infused life into what had previously been for me an uninteresting text. I hadn't thought Whitman could be so engaging.

A few other performances that I remember off the top of my head were of Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter", and Shane Koyczan's "Beethoven". Each of these poems were performed with such strong, unique voices. The student who performed "The Walrus and the Carpenter" did so in such a humorous way that - this being my first time encountering the text, aloud or on paper - I found myself laughing every time he switched voices. Thinking about it now, the voices of the walrus and the carpenter were each so strongly written by Carroll that - had I been reading them silently to myself from a book - I think I would still have been able to hear them in my head. The fact that the student brought them to life, and gave voice to them, quite literally, only made them that much more "real".

Another poem that I very much enjoyed hearing for the first time was "Beethoven". This, I think, had much more to do with the fact that I identified very much with Beethoven's drive for perfection, and how his father relentlessly drove him towards that unattainable peak. "Not good enough. Not. Good. Enough." These themes, mixed with the speaker's beautiful voice, brought tears to my eyes. I don't remember that contestant's name, but she was truly an artist.

I didn't stay to hear the contest results announced. Having already picked in my mind which performances I liked, it felt like a moot point to stay.