“There is power within words, that a power that any can tap into, but only few do,” the crowd all shared an assuring, affirmative nod in response to this line of Ally Gall’s poem at Friday night’s Poetry Slam. Gall, a first-year student and A&E Editor for the Oracle, seemed nervous before first approaching the stage, as she had never competed in a poetry slam. Her words seemed to find a home in the hearts of attendees, however, for she was greeted with an incredible amount of encouragement.

The other poets competing seemed to be able to comfortably share their personal feelings and words with the audience as well. Whether their poems reflected their views and experiences with racism, sexism, transphobia, abuse, love, politics or anything else they might have wanted to express, the audience and judges allowed them to comfortably do so.

“Poetry slam is really neat because it gives people an opportunity to share opinions they might not otherwise be able to, in an audience that seems so accepting of them,” said Kat Wilkins, a first-year on campus who attended the event.

Along with providing a comfortable environment, the audience was encouraged to enjoy themselves as much as possible. To aid this, there were various food and beverage options, including donut holes, scones, various other pastries, coffee and hot cider.

The panel of five judges was asked to score each poet on a scale from one to ten following their presentations. Competitors had a time limit of three minutes to present. Once each score was recorded, the highest and lowest of the scores were dropped, and the remaining three scores were added together to give the poet their final score for the round.

Out of nine poets competing, five were chosen to go on to the second round, from which two went on to compete against each other in the third. First place  won $100 and the runner-up won $50. This event’s runner up went by the stage name of Ashley A, and the winner went by the name Miss K.

“I started to do poetry as a way to vent. I’ve been writing poetry since the seventh grade. In eighth grade I decided to go on to writing slam poetry specifically,” K McClendon, a first-year and the winner of Friday night’s slam poetry event, reported. McClendon went on, “I think it’s very important to come to spaces like this and to go seek out a poetry slam. That’s where you’re going to see either what people are happy about or what people are struggling with. Whatever you’re going to hear, it’s going to be what that person really wants you to hear.”

“Slam is for the youth,” Kwabena Foli, a renowned poet and one of the event’s hosts, added. “Young folks simply don’t have a lot of safe spaces to talk about stuff like this. Stuff like rape culture, that’s what gets me every time. It’s easy for me to talk about what effects and what hurts me. It’s harder for me to imagine these things I’ve had the privilege to not experience personally. These young folks need a place to talk about these things.”

The next campus slam poetry event will be held in December, so any who are interested in attending should be on the lookout as the semester nears its end. Whether or not one finds themself to be proficient at poetry, both McClendon and Foli encourage students to try coming to a slam night and experience the, “safe space that poetry events provide.”