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February 5, 1999
Last August Alix Olson '97 performed an poriginal poem entitled "America's on Sale" and won the 1998 National Poetry Slam Championship for her petry team. Thursday night, she performed the same poem in the Campus Center MPR and won a standing ovation.
Olson is a member of the Nuyorican Poetry Team, along with Guy Gonzales, Lynne Procope and Steve Colman. The word Nuyorican is derived from the team's hometown, New York city and the group's Puerto Rican roots.
The team performs at poetry slams, original poetry performance competitions, across the country.
"I'm a friend of Alix's, and I knew she wanted to come perform at Wesleyan, and I'd seen the team three or four times already, so I already knew how awesome they are," explained Courtney Snegroff '99, who helped organize the event.
"I was kind of nervous to come perform at my alma mater," Olson said. "I assured my team that Wesleyan would be the perfect, receptive audience, but they were nervous too."
The event, which attracted enough students to fill the MPR to capacity, was sponsored by the English Department, the Queer Alliance (QA), the Women's Resource Center, the Black Women's Collective and La Unidad Latina.
"I was expectig a lot of people because it was sponsored by four or five different groups," Snegroff said. "But the actual number of people who whowed up was really surprising."
The event kicked off with an Entertainment Weekly television clip which recounted the team's recent national victory. Then Snegroff introduced the team with a short biography of each poet.
The teammates took turns performing their own poetry for an hour and a half before talking a break to answer questions from the audience.
"I wanted to be a folk singer," Olson admitted, in response to a student who asked how each performer became involved in the team. "But I couldn't play the guitar, so here I am."
Other students sought advice on writing poetry.
"I'll get a few lines in my head," Colman said. "I'll work them out in my head and then write them down so I don't forget."
"I should be able to read anything I write out loud--not necessarily in a slam, because a slam has a certain energy and flow, but it should be loud and clear, even on paper," Gonzales said.
"I believe there's a huge amount of responsibility in what we do." Procope emphasized. "A poem's got to make an impact, because [in a slam], you have three minutes to get a point across... there's no time for us to waste words."
The team concluded with another half hour of petry performances. Afterward, students crowded to speak with the performers, but books and audio tapes and obtain autographs.
"I thought it was clever the way [Gonzales] expressed himself in that last poem," said Jade Brown '02. "He used sort of verbal punctuation."
"I found it very insightful," said Jarrid Jones '02. "Those people are very talented in the way they can just bust rhymes like that... its was so on point. I was inspiring, really."
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