Last month I arranged for members of our Creative Writing class to go into the city for a poetry open mic night. We had about 20 students join us, and 5 or 6 of them were brave enough to share their poetry with the overflowing crowd at Baguio City's Mt. Cloud Bookshop. For most of the students, it was their first time at this pleasant and peaceful book shop, and for all of them, the "Third Monday from the Sun" was their first appearance at an open mic night.
They were nervous, and a bit intimidated by the crowd, largely populated by poets. But the cheerful and bubbly host of the night made everyone feel at home, instructing all of us poets to introduce ourselves, and encouraging the crowd to then respond.
Me: Hi, I'm Tracy
Crowd, in unison: Hi Tracy!
Throughout the show, most of our students remained in the balcony, only coming down if their name was called from the sign up sheet.
She had purposely put her name lower down on the list so she wouldn't be called first. But the host chose the names randomly, causing her to be teary-eyed and quivering as she kicked off the night.But she did an awesome job!
Some of the poems were more warm and cheerful. Others got a bit angsty.
Even the students who did not share their poetry seemed to enjoy the event, and claimed they'd definitely go back again - and maybe even read their own work next time. I was inspired, not only by their courage to share their poems, but because some of them were original poems that they did not write for our class. That means they're writing poetry, even when it's not assigned! Woohoo! Next week there'll be another open mic night, so I hope they're still writing. I guess that means I should get writing too...
Note: I don't have copies of the poems they shared that night, but one student emailed me a poem recently, so I thought I'd share it here. Enjoy!
The Yearning Heart
Affection Being Cursed
Dreams are Extremely Forbidden
Genuinely Hurting
Immensely Judging, Killing.
Loving Man
Now Offers you Perpetual Pain,
Quixotic Romance Starts to fade,
Time Unconsciously Passes
Vows were broken,
Wasted.
The Xylophone starts
to play a sad tone,the
Yearning heart amidst the Zephyr
Of winters' mood.
-BSE ENGLISH
