An interactive Poetry as Protest class was led by a UMKC graduate student on Sept. 30 at the Kansas City Public Library’s Plaza Branch as a part of the Writers for Readers event series.
The series is a partnership between UMKC and KCPL, brought on by Whitney Terrell, a creative writing instructor at the university. It provides creative writing graduate students at UMKC with the opportunity to teach workshops at the library.
Eva Schneider, a student in the MFA Creative Writing program studying creative nonfiction, teaches the Poetry as Protest class. She said she enjoys meeting other writers through the class and wants “to be a voice of positivity.”
“I want people to feel like their words matter, and I hope that people leave the class feeling like they’re capable and that the world wants to hear what they have to say,” she said.
Attendees got the opportunity to write their own poems based on techniques and themes that were featured and discussed during the analysis of some political poems.
One community member, Beverly, has participated in the Writers for Reading series since it began. She said she was drawn to Poetry as Protest specifically because she felt it could fulfill her need for self expression.
“I already feel like I’ve expressed myself in the poetry I wrote today, as I never thought that I could, and I’m delighted to be given the opportunity,” she said.
Kyle “Ky” Richardson, a poet in the community, said he was drawn to poetry as a method of protest due to its convenient nature.
“It’s just more accessible for working class people. I think poetry used to be seen as something that was kind of bourgeois, I guess, but I think every major working class movement has poets and poetry,” said Richardson.
The style in which poems are written plays an important role in poetry’s functionality as a means of protest.
“Poems are a really good system because they come in just little compact, beautiful pieces of words, especially when they have some sort of technique that helps you remember them, like rhyming or repetition,” said Schneider, who began reading poetry at about 15 years old.
Resistance poetry takes many forms, including chants at rallies, according to Schneider. It can also be used as a tool to send messages to society.
“A lot of poetry could be a call to action, a call to get people politically motivated, a call to spread political beliefs or ideology and just a way to express injustice and frustration,” said Richardson.
The impact of these poems often continues beyond the moment they are first shared and read.
“A really good poem can kind of permeate into somebody’s consciousness and change the way that they think forever, and I also think that poems can save a life as well,” said Schneider.
A list of upcoming events in the Writers for Readers series, including Poetry as Protest, is available here.
