The College’s creative writing organization, INK, hosted its Student Reading Series for this semester on Tuesday, March 4, in the Library Auditorium. Soft piano-playing filled the dimly-lit room, setting the stage for the three readers: Alena Woods, Blaire Deziel and Noor Azeem.
Woods, a freshman English major, began the event with nine powerful poems, echoing themes of religion, self-discovery and love.
Her first poem, titled “Matthew 5:30,” referring to the Bible scripture, immediately grasped the audience’s attention with its dark undertones and striking imagery, describing a girl’s first sexual encounter as “Eden in a dirty room.”
“I used to be really religious when I was younger,” Woods said.
She also said religion has influenced her writing and how she explains things. Woods believes that since so many people can relate to religious themes, instilling it in her poetry helps to make it easier to connect with and understand.
The second reader, Deziel, a junior English and secondary education dual major, provided the audience with a bit of comical relief. Deziel’s 11 pieces of poetry, and one prose, were filled with wit, cynicism and plenty of cussing.
“I think people forget that I’m funny, so I said I’m going to read these today,” Deziel said about her humorous choice of readings.
From her piece titled “To the Boys on OkCupid,” which addressed her colorful encounters with online dating, to her piece she created solely to make a “Uranus” pun, Deziel had the audience laughing through her whole performance.
Azeem, a freshman journalism major, was the third and final act of the night.
Azeem began with a piece titled “If I Should Have a Son,” mirroring spoken poet Sarah Kay’s piece “If I Should Have a Daughter.” The poem, which discusses the issues of accepting children for who they are, was captivating and thought-provoking, much like the rest of Azeem’s performance.
“I find it a lot easier to write when I’m pretending to be someone else,” Azeem said.
Many of her poems, such as her piece titled “10 Texts I Never Sent You,” are based on experiences her friends and family have had, or sometimes ones she created herself.
“A lot of the times ideas for poems will come to me if I imagine a certain scene or a phrase out of the blue, and I can get a better feel for it if I mold an imaginary situation around it, rather than twist my own experiences to fit into it,” Azeem said.
Her imagination and creativity definitely showed during her performance Tuesday night, along with the other talented writers.
“I thought they were all fantastic,” president of INK and junior English major Carly DaSilva said.
DaSilva, who joined INK as its president this year, loves the reading series events and hopes more people will apply as well as come to admire the talent found here at the College.
