Lisa Butler, a student at Manchester Community College, announced to the audience at Russell House that “storms are best for procreation.” Butler is not a climate researcher, but rather a student poet who was chosen as part of the Connecticut Circuit Student Poets tour. She, along with four other winners of the annual poetry contest, read original poetry last Wednesday.
Other student poets include Tess Bird of the University of Connecticut, Taylor Katz of Connecticut College, Tyler Theofilos of Yale University, and Wesleyan’s own Chiara Di Lello ’10. The University is but one stop on their tour of the state.
Di Lello began with a reading of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay before she read from her original work, inspired by the night’s lunar eclipse. Di Lello also spoke about her inclination to write in the early hours of the morning.
“The words come more easily when they’re stealing me from sleep,” Di Lello said.
Just as Di Lello is more prolific at certain hours of the day, each of the visiting poets shared their own writing habits and tendencies during their readings. Katz, a senior English major, confessed that she writes about what she knows best: people. This was seen most vividly in the first poem she read, about her best friend falling in love. Many pieces began by simply describing a person or an ordinary object, with more complex emotions slowly unfurling. Theofilos, for example, read a poem with one section dedicated to a mason jar.
As many of the poems explored relationships, it was only natural that many were about love. Bird, a Women’s Studies major, read one of her so-called “angry love poems,” the first of which she wrote at Wesleyan. The works detailed how she spent five weeks in a creative arts program at Wesleyan, during which she first discovered how poetry could serve as a perfect outlet for her frustrations.
If these differences singularly defined each poet, they also helped them forge connections with one another as they travel throughout the state, sharing pieces of themselves and their experiences with audiences.
“Getting to know the other poets has been an incredible experience because we’re able to share our different poetic backgrounds and support each other in presenting our work,” Di Lello said.
The readings also allowed the students to showcase not just their various writing styles, but their performance styles as well.
“I was impressed by the scope of the subject matter addressed by the poets and their ability to balance playfulness and craft,” said Davy Knittle ’11. “Their work on the circuit seems to have furthered their individual work to create a performance style that is reflected in the way in which each poet read.”
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