Let’s Get Loud, a newly founded organization at Sam Houston State University, will be hosting their first event, the Inaugural Women’s Poetry Slam, today at the Vortexan at 5 p.m. in honor of International Women’s Day.
The poetry slam will be put on by the organization along with sponsors from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Department and the English Department. The event is free to attend and will feature published poet Jasmine Mendez.
The President of Let’s Get Loud, Nicholas Smith, created the new organization to help bring together like-minded artists and poets to create and discuss poetry.
“We started this semester and we are interested in getting a community going here at Sam Houston that’s built around creative expression giving students an opportunity to express themselves through words and pros and a way to give meaning to the stories that we have in us. A way to heal, a way to discuss kind of the good and bad of what we have experienced as human beings,” said Smith.
The idea of this organization came about last semester when Smith attended some graduate readings for the English department.
“Going to the graduate readings I saw that there were students out here who were connected to what people were saying, were interested in what they had to say and hearing everybody daily struggle was like a realization like you know this could be something that they need too.” Smith said.
The event is dedicated to all women and consists of several rounds of poems from the poets. The winner of the poetry slam will receive a gift basket.
“It’s the Inaugural Women’s Slam at Sam Houston state university and it’s a slam dedicated to individuals who self-identify as female and what it is, a slam poetry event in which it consists of two rounds three minute poems from every poet and the winner receives a lovely little gift basket of books and chap books and more than anything it’s for the bragging rights to be our first slam champion and so I found that for international women’s day it was a great opportunity for our group to get something going,” Smith said.
Smith has experience with specific types of poetry, but the organization caters to all styles.
“I’ve been doing spoken word slam poetry for the last 5 years, right out of high school. Essentially it was a second home for me because with my background I had one outlet to play football but when I hurt my knee I couldn’t do that anymore so poetry kind of became a new outlet that I can channel some of those darker stories that I have from my childhood and things that I do on a daily basis,” Smith said.