Second Creative Writing Event Response

         I attended the second of this semester’s Third Thursday Poetry Series, at the Jules Collins Smith Museum of Art. I attended the first event and enjoyed it immensely, but I was apprehensive about attending this one, solely because I planned to read one of my own poems during the open mic section. I thought my reading went well, and it was a huge confidence boost, as my social anxiety usually prevents me from sharing my work publicly, especially in front of professors and even a few professional poet. 

The entire night seemed to me like a personal exercise in breaking stereotypes. One of the open mic readers, a distinguished-looking older woman, included in her poem a phrase similar to “fucking your brains out,” or something in the same vein. Another of the open mic readers, a man dressed in a camp print hat, a plaid shirt, and cowboy boots, rather than a poem closer to his assumed purview, read a touching poem about the alienation felt by a young girl. Finally, Tom Crawford, in his tight pink t-shirt and huge silver belt-buckle, subverted all my expectations about what a poetry reading could, and possibly should, be. 

It takes a special kind of humanity to arrive to your own poetry reading swigging Heineken and dressed like my grandpa on vacation. I had read several of Tom Crawford’s poems before arriving at the reading, and was excited to hear the poet himself real them aloud. However, he didn’t really do that. He interrupted the readings and interjected stuff like “stay with me know” so frequently that sometimes I was unsure if he was reading the poem or directly addressing the audience. His “poetry voice” was so similar to his natural voice that the two seemed indistinguishable. Mr. Crawford spoke more than he read, and I did enjoy some of the original things he discussed. He focused some of his discussion on the topics poets, himself included, choose about which to write. He has written at least one volume chiefly concerning birds. In expanding hugely upon an apparently simple theme, he raised more complex question like the poet’s relationship with the natural world, and it’s power to inspire self-reflection. Another concept he spoke of that I really enjoyed was his emphasis that life’s quotidian encounters, struggles, and conflicts are the stuff of poetry, and more generally, of all creative writing, not necessarily solely the grand and eternal. He emphasized that one’s personal journey and experiences are both real and important, for oneself and for poetry. A direct phase he used I wrote down was: “What’s real is inside you and not outside. You have to go there for the poetry,” with which I agree. Hearing messages like this strengthened my resolve to focus meaning in my work in the material which corresponds to the abstract I wish to convey. In this way, as a writer I should convey the spiritual and true that can be found in the quotidian of life and human experience.