Cultural Event #2: Festival of Poets

On April 28^th, I attended The Festival of Poets at Webster’s Café. At the event, I listened to Sheila Squillante and Sandra L. Faulkner present some of their work as poets. Also, I got to see the newly redone Webster’s Café for the first time. This experience was very new and unique to me because I was in a new place I had never been, and spectating a type of presentation I had never seen before.

The first poet, Sheila Squillante, shared many of her works which related to old relationships and the sad, negative feelings that accompanied them. She mentioned how talking about these past experiences was a weird feeling, and you could tell through some of the readings that they weren’t positive experiences for her. My favorite of her pieces were the few about her dreams. The setting and story always seemed odd, and some of the same themes like children, low roofs, and watching TV reappeared in many of them. I enjoyed the use of metaphors and other comparisons to tell a story instead of just blatantly stating the idea.

The second poet, Sandra L. Faulkner, wrote her pieces with a more straight forward feeling to them. Many of her pieces had a sexual nature to them, and as an unsuspecting member of the audience, this was slightly discomforting. The sexual tone and content of some of the pieces was a bit weird at first, but I was still able to focus on the readings without it being an issue. One thing I noticed about this reading was that people were a little less attentive than when Sheila Squillante was presenting.

Although poetry isn’t exactly my forte, I enjoyed hearing true poets present their work. Being able to witness the arts from the perspective of two seasoned poets is an interesting change up from the science curriculum of an engineer. I enjoyed the variation between the two poets and how differently poetry can be based on how literally one translates their message to the audience. I was impressed by the work of the two poets and was glad I got to experience this event in the new Webster’s Café.