For student poets like Eunice Gonzalez and Kevin Yang, writing poetry has a therapeutic value.
On Tuesday in the Kerckhoff Grand Salon, seasoned and beginning poets alike will take the stage at the fifth annual KnockOut Poetry Jam, a noncompetitive performance organized by the Social Awareness Network for Activism through Art, a student group that uses art to raise awareness about social justice issues.
Poets will include about 10 UCLA students, Los Angeles-based Shihan the Poet and five students from Manual Arts High School, an L.A. school that SANAA members visit on a weekly basis to provide an arts outlet. Through the medium of spoken word, the poets will draw attention to mental health and self-care, the theme of this year’s event.
“I think (this year’s theme) applies to everyone,” said Gonzalez, a fourth-year Chicana and Chicano studies student and participating poet. “People will be able to resonate with the poets’ work and hopefully want to know more about poetry.”
Gonzalez said one of her poems, inspired by her experiences with notions of beauty, relates to female body image. Another poem relates to self-empowerment, focusing on the message that a person does not need another person to be complete.
“Poetry has been (my) only outlet to express how I feel in a positive way,” Gonzalez said.
Shihan the Poet, a former regular on the HBO spoken-word series “Def Poetry Jam” and co-host of Da Poetry Lounge on Fairfax Avenue, will be the event’s featured poet and will perform pieces in his upbeat poetry style for 30 minutes.
Each student poet will recite up to three pieces. Following the performances, the Undergraduate Students Association Council Student Wellness Commission will take the stage to educate the audience about issues relating to the mental health theme of the event.
Fourth-year international development studies student Danielle Nguyen, programming director at SANAA and organizer of the event, said the UCLA student poets were selected through a casual auditioning process. While most poets who auditioned were then invited to participate, she had wanted to know what the poets were passionate about. She said SANAA wanted the students to use poetry as an expression of their own experiences.
“(The event) will be a refreshing, safe place where (poets) can say whatever comes to mind,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen said spoken word often has the type of social justice mission that is important to SANAA. She said, in general, people who write poems are very real about their emotions, but compared to printed poetry, the spoken medium provides a more attainable connection between the poet and audience.
Third-year world arts and cultures student and participating poet Kevin Yang said poetry can remedy people’s tendency to hide emotion to avoid feeling vulnerable. He said the theme of mental health is often seen as taboo, but that people should provide support for the issue. Because the event’s featured poems are based on personal experience, the audience will be able to see what a firsthand experience is like and learn about what can be done about mental health issues.
“I really relate to the mental health theme so (the event) has a personal connection to me,” Yang said.
Yang said he will be reciting a poem that he wrote to his mother, who had been part of an unhealthy romantic relationship and whose mental health had suffered as a result.
“It’s important that people know that people who have gone through stuff don’t have to be treated as victims,” Yang said. “It would just be nice for people to listen to them.”
Yang said he writes poems for himself as a way to help stabilize his life, without thinking about the reaction it will inspire in others. While he initially had a fear of speaking in public, he began attending open mic events after his friends encouraged him to try spoken word. He said putting emotion behind a performance is the only way to get the audience to really understand.
“It’s hard to talk about (mental health issues) because when you do, it’s very academic, like a case study,” Yang said. “I feel like we should approach it in a more everyday type of way.”