The Tell It Slant Poetry Festival 2021, a week-long collection of virtual events, ranging from poetry readings to workshops, raised money for The Emily Dickinson Museum and honored the Amherst local herself. The 5 College Poetry Slam was co-hosted and sponsored by the Nuyorican Poets Café and gave a scaled cash prize to the top three poets of the night and offered the winner a performance opportunity at the café.
As a poetry lover and performance enthusiast, I was skeptical about an online poetry competition. How would the poets connect with the audience? Would the impact and ambiance of the event be lessened through a computer screen? After a 15-minute delay due to technical difficulties, and with no option for closed captioning on Vimeo, I had part of my answer.
From the comfort of their rooms, all 13 students put forward two of their own poems, covering varied themes. Emma Cape, a student at Amherst and the winner of the contest, wrote one of my personal favorite poems of the night focused on her relationship with her father.
Despite the impersonal feeling of a streamed poetry competition, the audience remained at a steady 122 viewers for both rounds of works, and many utilized the chat to express appreciation and support for the performers. The judges showed their appreciation for the poets as well, not rating a single performance under a 7.5.
Three of the poets were our very own Smith students: Emily Judkins (Co-President of Spitfire), Paige Passantino (member of Spitfire) and Ava Silverman. While the winners hailed from other schools, our Smithies wrote powerful pieces.
Paige Passantio’s piece about shortening their poetry and making themselves smaller struck me, particularly the line, “If the short poem is nude, then I love every naked form except my own.”In Ava Silverman’s impactful first poem focusing on gender and sexual identity as a theatre kid, they said, “I’ve come to see the difference of being nothing at all and being everything at once.”. Emily Judkins clearly showed their masterful way with words through this line: “Revered for never running out of time to make into tea.”
The event was an impressive showing during a pandemic—we aren’t quite back to a level of comfort that allows cozy-close seating in a small café with dim lighting. While mood lighting and sitting way too close to the stage are [enjoyable] atmospheric elements of a typical poetry slam, the most important part was preserved in this webinar format: the poetry.
