Words are scribbled in white chalk, contrasting against the blackboard behind them. Students, normally hurriedly buying a smoothie, bent over a book studying, or talking loudly over the din of the blenders, take time to notice the poems covering the generally overlooked back wall. The poems add a little bit of beauty and artistic creativity to the normally loud, tense and stressed lives of overworked college students.
“Who’s the Poet in Your Life,” hosted by the Student Committee for the Arts and Center for the Art of Performance, is designed to reveal the creativity of students in bustling places, like the blackboard in Ackerman’s Jamba Juice, by offering students a venue to express themselves in the form of poetry.
The event began Thursday afternoon with a live poetry reading from students who have written poems or have found older, more famous poems that inspired them. After the reading, the students wrote those same poems on the blackboard. “Who’s the Poet in Your Life” will conclude next Thursday once people passing through Jamba Juice have had the opportunity to read the poems, and add to the board if they so choose.
Poetry submissions are open to all students. “Who’s the Poet in Your Life” will allow students to recognize how they use poetry in their everyday lives. Nicholas Below, a second-year math and economics student who helped organize the event, also wrote, read and contributed a poem to the wall.
“I started writing poetry around (age) 17, and I think this is a great way for me to get out of the whole math-science thing and be creative,” Below said. “The point of this is to help define what each individual does to express themselves, and poems can be what you use to channel your inner creativity.”
Zachary Robinson, a second-year geography and environmental studies student who is a part of the Student Committee for the Arts, is helping organize and advertise the event. He said the goal is to get more students interested and involved in poetry, and to move away from the rigid definition of formal poetry.
“‘Who’s the Poet in Your Life’ is completely based on ‘This is poetry if I say it’s poetry,’” said Robinson. “It’s really just up to students’ interpretation of what they think poetry is.”
Below said many students are often in too much of a hurry to stop and appreciate creativity, or to really allow language and words to make a resounding impact on them. The main initiative of the event is to expose hidden creativity in a public space.
Jamba Juice was chosen to host the event because there is a regular flow of students in the smoothie shack, Robinson said. Few would expect an often unnoticed blackboard to have so much beautiful language written upon it.
Spencer Davis, a fourth-year communication studies student and co-director of Student Committee for the Arts, said he hopes the event will help students recognize and view poetry as an art form, and take a moment to appreciate this underrepresented art in their daily lives.
“Jamba Juice is kind of a funny and ironic and a somewhat random place to be holding ‘Who’s the Poet in Your Life,’ but hopefully it will spur people to take a break from the daily grind to appreciate a cool and unique art form,” Davis said.
Email Sontag at asontag@media.ucla.edu.