Slam poets engage audience with poetry
Newcomer to slam poetry Terrence Way said it’s hard not to feel nervous in a packed room.
The Detroit sophomore was one of 14 Central Michigan University students who performed in Word Hammer’s second Slam Poetry performance of the year held in Moore Hall’s Townsend Kiva.
Communication and Dramatic Arts Adjunct Sadie Chandler, the adviser for the registered student organization, said she was proud to see her students succeed.
“It’s a breath of relief after you get done with a performance,” said Shelbie Moore, the first-place winner. “When you’re sitting in your seat waiting to be called, all you can think of is your poem and I feel better when I say my last words and hear the applause. It gets me every time.”
Moore, a Detroit sophomore, engaged the audience with her rants of social media and twisted relationships.
“I started writing after reading Nikki Giovanni’s ‘Kidnapped’ in the eighth grade,” Moore said. “I write about things that impact me personally and you just want to talk about things that make you upset or want to change.”
Introduced to Word Hammer at MainStage, Moore is a part of a group dedicated to improving the skills of poets and performers by holding spoken word competitions known as poetry slams.
“Coffee,” Moore’s second poem of the night, made the audience laugh and holler.
“I couldn’t write a poem when I came to Mount Pleasant — I could do it in Detroit, but not here for some reason,” Moore said. “Writing here was a whole lot different.”
She said she found inspiration can come at any time.
“I had the word stuck in my head and that was all I could think about. As soon as I got the opportunity, I quickly went to my computer and wrote as much as I could,” Moore said. “‘Coffee’ is what I lost my slam virginity to.”
The event lasted longer than scheduled, because of multiple rounds of performances and tiebreakers.
The second and third place winners were Detroit junior Joshua Taylor and Mount Pleasant junior Richard Bronson.
Moore said although it seems easy to watch people get up and perform, it is a lot more pressure that one can imagine.
“I always get stuck. There is a folder filled with 20 or more fragmented poems that I still need to finish,” Moore said. “If a person says they never hit a road block, they’re lying.”
