Poetry slam winners move to UT competition

Ball State University students competed Nov. 13 to see who would attend the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, a national competition for college students.

The University Programming Board (UPB) hosted the competition, attended by about 60 people. This was the first poetry slam competition UPB has offered, Student Programming graduate student Dillon Deffinbaugh said. He also said there was a lot of student interest that encouraged the board to create this event.

A panel of judges, including well-known spoken word poet Katie Wirsing, decided who would attend the competition. Others on the panel included student body president Jack Hesser, Ro-Anne Engle, director of the Multicultural Center, and Professor Shawn Lovelace, director of creative writing for the Department of English.

Wirsing introduced the poetry slam and gave the audience a taste of her poetry style.

“She points to her chest and says, ‘if you lived here, you’d be home by now.’” Wirsing said in one of the slams she performed for the crowd in the Student Center’s Cardinal Hall. “So I look at her and say, ‘If I lived there, I’d be really, really tiny.’”

Wirsing intertwined serious topics such as gay marriage with a great deal of humor throughout the show. She said her material for her poetry comes from her own life.

Four students were named winners of the slam, and if they accepted their invitation, they will attend the competition at the University of Texas at Austin. If they chose not to accept, alternatives will be chosen from those who placed lower in UPB’s Poetry Slam.

“The participating students are very excited for this opportunity,” Deffinbaugh said. “Due to the high number of participants, we hope to continue offering this event to students on an annual basis.”