Poetry @ Tech Review: Eady, Smith, and Lamkin

I noticed that each of these three speakers would give a brief introduction before beginning. They also all seemed very comfortable and confident on stage talking to the audience, something that not all of my peers in class had while reciting their poems (but understandable of course).

The first speaker, Cornelius Eady spoke like as if he were telling a story, like he was reading from a story book. I suppose he was telling a story within his poetry. It was just a slightly different form of recitation that  I wasn't generally used to. In one of his poems he talks about how his dad did the groceries in the house because although they were living on government surplus, bringing back food was a way of still being the breadwinner of the house. Now my dad does have a full time job, but he also is the primary grocery-getter for my family, and so I could relate to that.

The second speaker, Smith, was very musical. He would recite his poetry along with playing guitar and singing. It was an interesting concept because songs and poems are really so similar, practically one of the same. Songs use a lot of the literary devices like symbolism and repetition just as poetry does. It was also very impressive to me that he was able to still effectively read his poem while singing and playing a guitar. I know just from my experience reciting my poem, that it takes a lot of concentration, so it takes skill to simultaneously concentrate on other tasks in addition to an effective recitation. However, the singing and playing of the guitar also made it a bit more difficult to understand the actual words he was saying.

The third speaker, Patricia Anne, was very loud and clear. She was my favorite speaker of the three. Probably in part because I could understand each word she spoke so well. I could even hear her speaking live despite the fact that I was in the overflow room. The first poem 13 began about talking about her period, a subject most often hushed and not talked about. It was an attention grabber for sure. The various other 12 parts in her 13 part poem of 13 were all so descriptive showing a different aspect of the age 13 for each one.

However, the poem that really stuck in my mind was her poem about the drowning of a little girl. She begins by telling how it is based off of a real incident that has occurred, Then he just adds in such description and detail that you can imagine the play-by-play of this horrible event occurring.
She splits the poem into the five stages of drowning and switches from the girls point of view to the father's disturbing point of view. At one point, she even stuttered to simulate the girl drowning, gasping for breath, a sound she imitates so well that it really brought the scene to life.

All three of these speakers were very talented and they each had unique styles of reciting, (just like the students in my class). I almost think that the order was chosen on purpose though, because it was perfect to have such a loud vibrant speaker such as Lamkin finish out the evening.