Student poet captures 51 Main

Amidst talk of plummeting profits and financial instability, 51 Main played host to an event last Thursday, April 28, that transcended any monetary value. The gathering of students, faculty and community members was warm and lively, and the space was brimming with faces, all brought together to hear Catarina Campbell ’11 perform poetry and play host. The evening was not widely advertised, and as a result, fostered an intimate atmosphere: the students were largely from the class of soon-to-be graduating seniors, and the faculty in attendance were personally involved with poetry. This gave a bittersweet air to proceedings, as the sense of the senior’s upcoming departure was palpable in the bustling space.

Far from the typical image of a soft-spoken, paper-shuffling poet, Campbell performed a series of animated spoken word poems for a little under an hour, with interjections, performances, anecdotes and readings from her friends and colleagues along the way.

“It was my dream senior project,” Campbell said, reminiscing on the event, “and I envisioned it originally as an excuse to have a lot of members of my Middlebury family and community come together at one time. I have used spoken word as a way to write myself through things and to write my way into new identities. I wanted to have a chance to read things I’ve written from freshman to senior year; when I perform a poem, for those moments spent reading, I am back in the emotional space I was in when I wrote it. It was a really liberating and validating feeling to be able to embody so much of what I experienced in four years by performing so many of my poems in one night.”

Campbell also stated at the beginning of the evening that her mission was to explore “spoken word as a medium” as “a way to build community.” With tightly packed bodies crouched on the floor and squeezed into every space available, this goal was achieved before a single poem had been spoken.  Campbell had asked her acquaintances to share poems, quotes and stories between her own readings, making the overall performance collaborative and communal.

The poems themselves touched upon issues that the College community also grapples with — identity, hook-up culture and gender were among the topics. Between the politics and personal memories, Campbell’s use of language shone; pithy, declarative, observant and most of all memorable, she declared at one point to be starting a “four-foot-ten, brown and boobless revolution” on stage.  Her supporting acts from friends were likewise memorable and charming: a retelling of Dr. Seuss’ Oh The Places We’ll Go, poetry from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, study abroad anecdotes and personal stories about their relationship with Campbell.

Although the audience came down to 51 Main to hear poetry, it was clear that many people were also there as a marker of friendship, as a way of remembering the times they shared with Campbell. The performances given by Campbell and her compatriots were also a reminder that, as we all approach the manic end of the semester, college is about more than the GPA and the BA you get at the end of it; it’s about the friendships and close bonds you build along the way.