[adrotate banner="16"]

[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]

Despite the growing art scene in Hamilton, poetry has remained the one artistic medium that does not have as much exposure or contributors as the rest.

With music at the helm and painting hanging on its flank, there doesn’t seem to be any established room for poetry in the Hamilton art scene. As someone who appreciates reading and writing poetry, I have found it incredibly difficult to find a space to share and collaborate with other writers here in Hamilton.

It’s disappointing to not have a dedicated space to poetry. Toronto used to have one called Quattro Books that would host readings throughout the summer. It was a great space, but even while it was running it was difficult for me to make the time to go all the way to Toronto from Hamilton. It wasn’t necessarily “inaccessible,” but it was definitely an ordeal to get to. That’s the issue, though: there should be a downtown space like that accessible to Hamiltonians.

There was only one event during Supercrawl this past weekend that had a timeslot for poetry reading, and that was a quiet event that called itself “Liminal Spaces.” There were minimalist signs posted around town, but even those didn’t draw a crowd to the house just off of James Street North. It was, however, exciting for me to see poetry poking its head up somewhere downtown. It made me even hungrier for a dedicated space.

I have done my own looking around downtown, and I have come up virtually empty-handed. Granted, I found a reading group that I attended once. I stumbled upon it at random, and I was rather disappointed. Barring the summer months, Homegrown Hamilton hosts an event known as “Lit Live,” where weathered writers gather to read old material that lacks a liveliness and relevancy needed to draw the younger crowd. I found myself experiencing this lackluster performance amongst a group of people who were all familiar with each other and, of course, the pieces being read from bookmarked books that were read over and over again for years at these nichey types of places.

For a young writer like myself, these tired events are exactly what I want to avoid. I want to remain active in my writing and surround myself with daily inspirations. I do not want to find myself in the same bars reading the same poems to the same people for years on end. I can only hope to keep my eyes peeled for new venues and new groups of my peers to enthusiastically read and write alongside me in Hamilton. I mean, with it being such a fantastic city for artists to flourish, where is the space for the writers? I hope to find an answer to that soon—not just for myself, but for the other writers who are looking for these spaces, too.

[feather_share show="twitter, google_plus, facebook, reddit, tumblr" hide="pinterest, linkedin, mail"]

[adrotate banner="12"]

Tobi Abdul
Staff Reporter

If you put me in a group of five people I didn’t know, my anxiety would shoot through the roof and I’d be in a panic.

But if you put me on stage in front of fifty people and asked me to bare my soul, I wouldn’t hesitate. Being someone who usually prefers to be alone, having a passion for spoken word doesn’t make much sense.

But here I am, competing a few times a month in poetry slams in Hamilton and Toronto, standing in front of other people and asking them to assign a numerical value to how I share my thoughts, my feelings and my fears. The nerves don’t go away. Before each performance I feel like I’m going to throw up, my hands shake, a million things other than the poem run through my head and I fear terrific failure.

The first time I performed my poetry out loud was at a high school literary coffeehouse complete with black tablecloths, tea lights, and about seventy people. My knees shook so much that I thought I was literally going to fall. My voice wavered and I stared down at my paper the entire time, but as soon as I was done, the auditorium erupted into applause and in that moment, I fell in love with performing.

As soon I get on the stage, for those few minutes, I become someone else, someone more confident, less aware of my surroundings. It’s not so much that I have to overcome my introversion in order to perform spoken word, it’s that my passion for it is so big it feels impossible not to. Even though people are literally judging me, the reception somehow validates me. Lets me know that I’ve just told people the inner workings of my brain and they dig it.

That’s not to say that I only perform poetry for validation. It’s just an added bonus. The main reason why I compete in poetry slams and perform spoken word is to release. Spoken word is a rare format because you get to express yourself without anticipating a response. It’s a one-way conversation that is received with applauses, ovations, cheers and high scores (for the most part).

When I feel anything, whether it be happy or sad or angry, I write a poem. When I get up in front of people and say the poem, it’s as if I’ve just released all the feelings I’ve been holding in. Before I knew what an introvert was, I just thought I was a weird kid who was destined to be alone. I didn’t realize that it was normal to be exhausted by people. Even when you don’t try to, you’re constantly putting on a show for people. From putting on clothes, to brushing your hair, to showering, to looking presentable, it’s all for other people. Of course, I don’t go around dishevelled, dirty and naked when I am alone, but you put in an effort to look presentable for the public.

Beyond that, everything that you say has to be socially appropriate and you have to censor yourself slightly depending on your environment. When I felt like people wouldn’t understand the words I had to say, I would listen to or read other people’s words for reassurance in some semblance of unity.

When I heard a spoken-word poem for the first time, it was as if the feelings I got when I listened to a song and the ones I got when I read a good monologue came together. Since then, I haven’t been able to get enough of it. Having a passion for something outside my comfort zone but discovering that I’m pretty good at it forced me to come out of my shell. There’s one moment during every performance when I look into the audience and they’re looking at me with admiration that I realize I’m doing exactly what I was meant to do.

I still prefer to spend time alone, but every day I step out because I have to in order to keep doing what I love. I keep writing in hopes that one day there will be an awkward teenage kid who thinks they’re weird and my words will help them realize they aren’t. I hate being judged, I usually hate being the centre of attention and I hate putting on shows for people but yet I spend most of my time writing so that I can put on a show for people, be the center of attention and get judged. Ironic.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. When you discover your passion, you may have to step outside of your comfort zone to pursue it but I can guarantee that it will be worth it.

Carlos Andres Gomez travelled nearly 800 km to Hamilton Monday night to speak about a confrontation outside a New York nightclub that changed his life.

“We have to start with our own story,” said Gomez, a spoken word poet known to tackle societal definitions of masculinity.

At TwelvEighty, Gomez addressed students and community members about some of the territory he covers in his latest book, Man Up: Breaking the Code of Manhood.

Gomez spoke about pressure he felt to be a jock in middle school and high school in New York City.  He said his concept of what it means to “be a man” reached a turning point one night outside a club when a man he’d accidentally bumped into wanted to fight him.

“I couldn’t figure out why two men were willing to die over nothing,” he said.

Gomez also described his emotional response—what he’d tried to disguise as an “allergic reaction”—to poetry the first time he heard it. A former social worker and inner city public school teacher, Gomez now performs spoken word poetry around the world.

“At 16 I was building myself up to be this perfect man,” said Gomez during his speech. “I realized, maybe everything I’ve been doing to be a man has been totally incongruous to what I am.”

Gomez describes his work as being about “reimagining what it means to carry a banner of identity.”

“The one-sided version of manhood I was given feeds into violence between men, violence against women and homophobic violence.” he said.

The goal of Gomez’s performances is to prompt people to break away from gender stereotypes.

“There’s a tremendous power and responsibility that comes with being on the stage. I want to make sure I’m talking about things with high stakes.”

Subscribe to our Mailing List

© 2024 The Silhouette. All Rights Reserved. McMaster University's Student Newspaper.
magnifiercrossmenu