The Voice

Issue date: 3/12/07 Section: Inside WCC

Media Credit: Chad Green Matt Hunter speaks from the heart at the Valentine's Day poetry reading.

Love, sex, prejudice, rage, and rhythm came together at the newly formed WCC Poetry Club's Valentine's Day reading on February 14. Gathered in the Study Pub, students and staff recited their own prose and listened to others' poetic musings in styles from haiku to hip hop.

Tom Zimmerman, WCC English instructor and head of the Poetry Club, read Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose" and Lucille Clifton's "Homage to My Hips" to get things started before leaving the microphone open to audience members.

Over the next hour, participants recited original compositions and read from books of poetry. In accordance with the holiday, love was a common theme. Reciting one of his works, WCC Poetry Club member Michael Moriarty described being in love.

"We can feel again, together," he said, his voice growing louder and faster as he read. "We were warped puzzle pieces soon to finally fit."

Others focused on negative emotions, like Jill Cobb in her original piece "Never Again," which apparently embodied anger toward an unfaithful lover.

"Everywhere I see red/ I close my eyes and smile until you die," Cobb recited.

Participants were not limited to the realm of romantic relationships, however. In her poem "Reverse Genocide," Kawther Mohammed contemplated prejudice and put into words the contrast between the dark- and light-skinned.

"You are lucky your eyes are as blue as the sky," she read.

Those in the audience, leaning forward in their chairs in the middle of the pub or peering out of booths, listened while holding notebooks and stacks of handwritten and typed poems. A few had out pens and paper and were working to compose new poems.

Zimmerman regularly threatened the audience with "the book," An Introduction to Poetry by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, when there was a lack of people offering to read their poetry.

"The English teacher's just going to get the book out and start reading," he joked.

Although volunteers usually kept him from resorting to the book, Zimmerman did read one poem of his own, "Weird Sister," along with some haiku.

The reading ended with a hip-hop style recitation from WCC student Terrance Boyd. Boyd enlisted the audience to take part in his performance, instructing participants to say, "Ain't no woman like the one I got" at his signal.

Continued...

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