SMC Tries To Bring Bigger Audiences To Poetry Readings

Carol Davis, an English professor at Santa Monica College performs a poetry reading during the “Surreal Borderlines and Portals to Awareness” event in Stromburg Hall at the SMC main Campus in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, April 18, 2019. Winner of 2007 TS Eliot prize, Davis is the author of the books Because I Cannot Leave This Body and Between Storms. Today, she shares “A Watched Pot” and “Because” from her book Because I Cannot Leave This Body” for the audience. (Catherine Lima/Corsair Staff)

Wilfred Doucet, an English professor at Santa Monica College, performs a poetry reading during the “Surreal Borderlines and Portals to Awareness” event in Stromburg Hall at the SMC main Campus in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, April 18, 2019. Doucet co-founded and facilitated the Dyamsay Writers’ Workshop in Santa Monica, the Third Root Writers’ Workshop and Artist Showcase in the Pomona Arts Colony, and a poetry reading series at Velocity Cafe in Santa Monica. Today, he shares with the audience “When Daddy Came Home”, based on his early memories of his father, and “The Ghost on Ninetieth”, based on the Inglewood community. (Catherine Lima/Corsair Staff)

Ernie Padilla, an English professor at Santa Monica College, performs a poetry reading during the “Surreal Borderlines and Portals to Awareness” event in Stromburg Hall at the SMC main Campus in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, April 18, 2019. Publisher and editor of Lalo Press, Padilla mainly publishes books and poems written by Mexican American women. Today, he shares “I Am a DACA Dreamer and the GPS Sees Only Beauty” and “Go, Not to Leave” for the audience. (Catherine Lima/Corsair Staff)

Irvin Meneses, an Art student at Santa Monica College, performs a poetry reading during the “Surreal Borderlines and Portals to Awareness” event in Stromburg Hall at the SMC main Campus in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, April 18, 2019. Today, Meneses shares his poem Coffee Shop, about gentrification taking place in Los Angeles. (Catherine Lima/Corsair Staff)

Audience members of the “Surreal Borderlines and Portals to Awareness” event in Stromburg Hall at the SMC main Campus in Santa Monica, California on Thursday, April 18, 2019.

Irvin Meneses stood calmly defiant at the dais. He wore a grey beanie and a T-shirt displaying a cartoon image of President Donald Trump being shot in the head. Meneses recited his poem with nonchalance, dropping words into the audience like hand grenades.

“Fuck all the fools that live day to day,” Meneses read. “I want the rich idiots, I want the rich idiots who won’t complain.”

The poetry reading, Surreal Borderlines & Portals to Awareness, was held on April 18 in Stromberg Hall. Though sparsely attended, the event reflected the trends of diversity—of both poet and form—that its organizers hope will carry poetry into the millennial world.

Meneses’s poem about the gentrification of Los Angeles, told from the perspective of a real estate developer, fit well with the event’s themes of immigration, xenophobia and otherness.

David Burak, a Santa Monica College (SMC) English professor, organized the event. “There’s been a general consensus among...professors and scholars that there's been a back and forth between [the areas of] Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and the United States for ten thousand years,” Burak said in describing the inspiration for the event. “So the fact that we have borderlines that now Trump wants to put a huge wall on is surreal. And wrong.”

The poets came from diverse backgrounds, but also performed diverse styles of poetry. While some maintained a conventional style, many took on a more performance-oriented spoken word approach.

Andrew Jones, an SMC student, primarily performs as a rapper. “I am a rapper, so it’s a little different than how you normally hear this,” Jones said as he launched into his spoken-word piece normally performed over music.

While poetry readings at SMC may be trying to speak to a wider audience, only about 30 people sat in the 100-plus seat auditorium, a testament to the dwindling interest in live poetry readings.

“It seemed there was more energy when we’d put together these types of poetry readings,” said Mario Padilla, an SMC English professor who performed at the reading. “Today was really the least amount of people that there’s ever been to one of these readings.”

Padilla tries to encourage more participation in the poetry scene by modernizing the way he teaches writing workshops. “You have to transform. Just giving a straight out poetry creative writing workshop, it’s just not enough for a millennial crowd. Their poetry’s coming from different areas.”

Grace, a student of Padilla’s who declined to give her last name, contends that poetry is alive but just in different forms.

“I think that poetry is in different forms nowadays… Even Kendrick Lamar and different rappers and songwriters do a lot of poetry of their own, and so we might ingest it in different ways,” Grace said. “I also think social media, through the captioning of photos, I read a lot of poetry through that all day.”

Still, the poetry department is trying to attract larger audiences to live events. Padilla said, “The next time let’s really make sure that the kids know we’re gonna bring in more spoken word artists, we’ll bring in a couple song writers, bring in maybe a rap artist, and really give them the kind of material that they would appreciate along with standard poetry and the stuff that we did up here today. I mean that’s never going to go away, but I just think you have to fill in with the other stuff as well.”

Padilla gestured to the largely empty auditorium. “We’re not getting as many people to come to these things. We used to have the art auditorium filled,” he said. “I’d say that, little by little, it’s hard to get people to a poetry reading.”

Wilfred Doucet, another SMC professor who performed at the reading, took the stage. His second poem, The Ghost on 90th, explores the disappearance of local businesses in Inglewood as the the city builds its new stadium. It asks if the modern world has room for the simpler days of the past.

“You afraid someone might hear? We’re the only ones here. I didn’t know this place was here, Doucet recited. His long dreadlocks are beginning to grey. “We’re never the only ones here. The ghosts watch and remember. We’re never the only ones here.”

Surreal Borderlines & Portals to Awareness is part of SMC’s Literary Talks and Readings series.

To learn about upcoming events visit Literary Talks and Readings events online.