NORTH BRUNSWICK — Though a student’s first experience with poetry in high school is usually through the works of William Shakespeare, about 30 students from North Brunswick Township High School were exposed to the more modern facets of the literary genre at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival on Oct. 8.
Over 5,000 high school students descended upon the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark for the 13th biennial festival, which featured poetry readings, discussion groups, storytelling sessions and musical performances by well-established poets.
Catherine McCarthy, an English teacher in North Brunswick, organized this year’s trip for any students interested in written and spoken language.
“It’s wonderful how [the poets] speak to the students and the teachers as if they are fellow wordsmiths … as if they are talking to other lovers of words,” she said.
The students had several favorite speakers they were inspired by.
Rita Dove, in 1993, became the youngest person and the first African American to be appointed United States poet laureate.
“Just the way she expressed herself [is what I enjoyed],” said senior Lanna Karupen, who actually grew up hating poetry. “She was so influenced by everything in her life. She put words together you wouldn’t think [would go together].”
Iraqi-born Dunya Mikhail was 15 years old when Saddam Hussein’s armies invaded western Iran in 1980. Her fiancé was conscripted into the Iraqi army, and the two didn’t hear from each other for 10 years. Since her fourth collection of poetry contained antiwar sentiments, she fled to Jordan for nine months before immigrating to the United States, where she has lived in exile ever since.
Somehow, her fiancé found her, and they reconnected. They married and had a child years later. She shared a poem about her daughter that was written partly in Arabic.
“I found her powerful because she didn’t let her country stop her,” Karupen said. “When she read the poem about her daughter, you heard the passion in her voice.”
Martín Espada was a tenant lawyer in New York and Boston. Inspired by his father, who was an activist in his community in Puerto Rico, Espada writes about personal and political events.
“He is a voice for the invisible,” McCarthy said.
“The way he spoke was just very enticing. You could hear how it flowed,” said junior Irving Lewinson, who said he has been influenced to write about his own cultural background, which is Jewish and German.
Kwame Dawes is a poet, playwright, musician, essayist and novelist who was born in Ghana but spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica, and so his accent added to his poetry style.
“He started off his presentation with a song, which was nice,” said freshman Nicole Fosko, who has been published in “The Anthology of Poetry for Young Americans.”
“His voice was so lyrical,” McCarthy said.
Overall, the students greatly enjoyed the festival, and have used the styles, techniques and experience to influence their own writings.
“It’s something you don’t get very often, to hear so many voices from around the world,” said Lewinson, who began writing new poetry as soon as he returned from the festival. “When you hear about an actual poet’s life … and hear the poet read it and explain it, it’s a totally different experience.”
“It really opened my eyes to poetry, because there were so many people there and they used styles I didn’t even know existed,” such as combining languages, using various accents, speeding up the voice to create suspense, slowing down the reading to create tension, and using body language, Fosko said.
“They made it look so modern. You think of poetry as old-fashioned … but it made it seem so doable,” Karupen said.
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