Alex McGuire
Reporter
Despite a late start, the rainy, foggy Tuesday weather didn’t stop Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House students and other regulars from attending the second Terpoets of the semester. The biweekly open mics provide an open environment where anything can be said and heard. Terpoets coordinator and Writers’ House student Dolapo Demuren said they’re mainly about solidarity.
“I think when coming to Terpoets, you really realize that we’re all different for a reason and we’re going to remain different,” said Demuren, a sophomore English major and creative writing minor. “But it’s accepting that that brings us together.”
Creative juices were flowing as students and stories of all varieties were heard in the basement of Dorchester Hall, ranging from the Terpoets president’s story about meeting an ex-girlfriend at the library to sophomore Tyler Kutner’s surreal poetic journey through “forests of skyscrapers and patches of wooden planks.”
The open and respectful environment aims to motivate students to read another’s or their own works, even if they doubt themselves. Uniqueness is the underlying goal of Terpoets.
This was expressed through a group activity during the open mic where a piece of loose-leaf paper is passed around and everyone writes two lines of whatever he or she likes. The sheet is then folded over, so the next person can only read the last line. At the end of the open mic, the poem, called an Exquisite Corpse, is read aloud.
“We’re not a sort of puzzle that you can just piece together,” Demuren said. “We understand that we’re all unique and we embrace that, so that’s what we’re about: accepting the difference.”
While Terpoets has a huge presence within the Writers’ House community, word of the long-running program is spreading and its popularity outside Dorchester is slowly and steadily increasing. Open mics are every other Tuesday night and are marketed through the official Terpoets Facebook page and word-of-mouth.
“I think we are still reaching out to students who are not in the Writers’ House and I think we are moving along quite well,” Demuren said during an intermission. “Promotion is very important so we are trying to get onto that as quick as possible.”
