Sofia Tartakovskaya 11/20/2022
I attended the Poetunity: Poetry Open Mic Night because I am interested in poetry and wanted to hear the people of the Muhlenberg Communities’ views and their creations. A lot of the poems were about diversity and the hardships within that, which I found very interesting. This poetry open mic night included a lot of people of color and people with disabilities expressing their hardships and challenges throughout life. I have not experienced all of this so I was very interested in what they had to share. I definitely consider myself an ally but the people performing and speaking brought up a lot of good points about how some people can just be fake or performative allies, so it made me look into myself and how I present. This experience definitely helped me gain a new perspective toward all people and especially those who shared/performed. I feel like it takes a lot of courage to share what they talked about and I am thankful I got to learn from it. One thing during the event that I really enjoyed was that in between some of the poets, the person hosting asked the audience to participate in discussions about questions she was asking. Most of the questions included stuff about relationships with ourselves, friends, and romantically. This along with the carefully curated poems that many shared showed me that everyone has different experiences and hardships, but there is so much everyone can relate to in different ways. I learned a lot while looking through a different perspective and I would definitely go to another one if I have the opportunity.
