By Kia Wynne
The second annual Poetry, Pride and Pie event was a way for students to express themselves through their writing or someone else’s. Many people showed up for the event at D.F. Lowry.
Senior Emma Cooke and English faculty advisor Hannah Baggott helped organize the event. During the fall, they held an event called Poetry, Pride and Pumpkins.
“We wanted to create a space for people to come and celebrate queerness wholeheartedly and openly instead of being forced to reflect on the struggles of being queer. Everyone is encouraging, supportive, loving and that is what I wanted to be captured,” Cooke said Spectrum and the writing center helped to sponsor the event.
Some students performed once while others performed two recitations. The poems consisted of queer-related topics and some explicit language.
Noah Britt read a poem that he received from Baggott. After his performance, Cooke came up and read a poem about coming out that she wrote.
Raven Boone, a tutor at the writing center, performed two poems that she wrote and recited “Monster” by Nicki Minaj. She was not the only one who performed songs as poetry. Adeline Kelley performed a song by Justin Bieber called “Speaking in Tongues” and Noemi Yisra’EL performed a song from Lemonade Mouth called “Determinate”.
Amarion Howie performed two poems that he wrote during the event. When it comes to his poetry, he tries to make it as relatable and personal as possible for the audience.
“I write down how I feel and try to put together the words that make up the emotion. “I found myself being able to express myself in words easily,” Howie said.
Howie found out about the event on the same day from the president of Inkwell. Inkwell is a new club created by Briana Taylor in 2016. The organization is dedicated to creating a safe space for students to express themselves through their writing. Students can share and create stories, poetry, and ideas about diverse topics. The organization meets every two weeks in whatever room they can find from 3 pm to 4 pm.
For the final performance of the event, a duo performed “Moment of Truth” between Bling and Truth from Let It Shine.
“My favorite performance had to be the determinate rap. The Let It Shine rap at the end was the piece of resistance, but the determinate one was just so funny,” Senior Lara Lautfi said.
Lautfi said that if they were to throw another event like this she would attend and perform a poem of her own.