Marquette’s Written & Spoken Poetry Club tapped into their creative juices at the 707 Hub last Thursday for their last poetry slam of the semester. The night’s theme, ‘Whichever 80’s you want’, attracted a variety of self-written pieces and poems from admired writers.
Eric Seger-Pera, senior in the College of Arts & Sciences and vice president of the club, said he first joined the club his sophomore year.
“I started with songwriting, always liked writing music more than I’ve liked playing music. My parents started me on piano lessons in second grade,” Seger-Pera said.
Seger-Pera read one of his poems, ‘Dreams of the Past’, which he said was inspired by a Psychology article he read about whether humans dream in the color of black & white.
Later on, after a brief intermission, he re-joined the stage to read two poems he composed, ‘Skater King’ and ‘Tornado’.
Members dressed up following the 80’s theme such as Brennan Wills, a sophomore in the College of Communication, who said his favorite poem he read was the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’ by Geoffrey Chaucer.
“He wrote this whole thing in rhyme verse in Middle English, and it was a really good story is the thing I liked about it too, it’s just so very thorough and it’s been observed as one of the best tales of his collection and it fits with the theme of the 1380’s,” Wills said.
Members were welcome to share any piece they had been working on whether it was from five months ago to five years ago.
When writing, Wills said he consistently resonates with the idea of lyric verse.
“I feel like poetry sometimes needs to have a certain form and law to it. So, I guess what inspires my writing is mostly making sure things kind of go sing-songy and have a kind of form with them,” Wills said.
Noah Salins, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences, then read his poem which focused on artificial intelligence called, ‘Artificial time’.
Seger-Pera said the group members facilitate exercises to get creative juices flowing at their weekly Thursday night meetings.
“We’ve recently started having some presentations at the start of a meeting where someone will come in with a poet they like and some poems from them and talk about it. It’s a nice way to get exposed to some other things and give people more of a chance to get involved,” Seger-Pera said.
Matthew Manka, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences and president-elect, said he joined the club because he loved the environment.
“I think the environment is kind of similar as it always was it’s a very open, very low-stakes environment where you can just chill out with friends and take advantage of the opportunity to write when you’d like,” Manka said.
Seger-Pera mentioned how this semester, the club has tried a new writing exercise known as exquisite corpse poetry.
“Exquisite corpse poetry which is where one person writes a line and the other person writes a line, then you fold over the paper, so the next person only sees the line before,” Seger-Pera said.
Seger-Pera said he gains inspiration from many different topics and with so many genres of poems, he said there is not one defining factor that makes a poem.
“I get inspiration from all sorts of things, I write a fair bit about geology or places. I try to imagine a cool place and describe it or what may be going on there,” Seger-Pera said.
While Manka said he draws his inspiration from literary greats such as Shakespeare and Milton.
“I’m inspired by a lot of the things that I’m reading or have read or have been thinking about as a result of having read. But more broadly I think there’s a lot of great inspiration that spawns out of thinking about living in a way,” Manka said.
This story was written by Mimi Sinotte. She can be reached at [email protected].
