A night of loud poetry

Successfully pumping up the audience even before one is on stage is no easy task, especially for the performer. However, visiting slam poet, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz did it with ease Thursday evening on Sept. 30 and got the crowd going while sitting in her seat.

Thompson room 101 was full of people hustling and bustling about as everyone anticipated the appearance of the New York City based slam poet that night. Fans of Aptowicz, as well as students who were unfamiliar with her work showed up for the slam poetry reading and surely did not leave disappointed.

"I think she's hilarious. I felt like I was being entertained and not bored," freshman Chante DeLong said. "She just made me miss the city right now!"

Aptowicz's poems, some of which were inspired by city life, were able to entertain the whole crowd. The audience could not seem to help but to laugh at her energetic and passionate self as she performed eight of her poems.

A poetry slam  is a competition started by Marc Smith in the 1980s. Poetry slams have since grown and spread all over the world with poets performing their original works, each with their own unique voices and different perspectives on what they see.

"Anything can be considered slam poetry," Aptowicz said. "Slam poetry is anything that actively [has] the community respond and it must have authenticity."

She started when she was nineteen years old as she was attending New York Univeristy's Tisch School of the Arts in New York City. Aptowicz explained that NYU students were not what she expected and she did not exactly feel comfortable.

Until one night, another slam poet, Beau Sia, invited everybody to a slam, except for her. Of course, she made her way to the show that night and decided that this was something she could do and wanted to join the dialogue. More than that, she found people that she was able to relate to.

"People there were the people I was looking for," Aptowicz said. "There were different people of different diversities and they were driven by the passion to write."

In addition to her poetry, she also has four books out, her newest book being Everything is Every Thing which was being sold before the performance began. Her book that she is currently in the process of working on is another non-fiction book about Thomas Dent Mütter.

"I get inspiration from anywhere. I like a lot of non-fiction [and hearing] true stories," Aptowicz said. "I really like seeing the choices that people make and the actual repercussions of those. All my stuff is autobiographical, either I'm interested in it or it's happened to me. I find inspiration wherever I can find it, I'm really into supporting via purchasing books and reading veraciously."

Being a person who was never really interested in performing, Aptowicz did an amazing job giving her performance everything she had. One would never know by watching her that she has never taken any acting classes in her life.

"I went in with no expectations, seeing how I have never heard of her work before," Michael Anguish a sophomore and visual arts major said. "But after seeing her I was surprised by the amount of energy she put into her performance. Her performance energy is a part of her work [and] I enjoyed how her writing style was mostly a dialogue or a retelling of stories."

Aptowicz explained how difficult it was for her at first to get her book published. She even made a poem that was a collaboration of all her rejection notes titled "Notes on Rejection", which she read at the slam reading. However, something she would tell everyone is to not give up.

"Be bold and mighty forces will join you… who said that? Is it Goethe?" laughed Aptowicz. "Essentially, if you move forward and attack the center of what you want instead of doing paths other people have done, you will find the strength and energy to keep propelling you forward. Don't let your insecurities stop you."

If you missed her performance that night, you can always find more of Aptowicz works on her website aptowicz.com or to watch her performances feel free to look her up on Youtube.