Emily Weitzman ’14 and Randyl Wilkerson ’12 performing “Eyes,” which won Best Persona Poem.

Emily Weitzman ’14, a member of the Wesleyan Slam Poetry Team, writes:

Spending a week in Michigan surrounded only by poets and poetry may have been the furthest from reality I have been in a while. But at the same time, I experienced more emotions in a short period of time than I ever thought possible. One poem would punch you in the face, the next would gently hold your hand, then you would be hiding under your chair in fear, and finally, you were crying from hearing a line that let you feel something you never knew you could. I have never felt more strongly that a poem can change your life.

Between April 6th and April 9th, weSLAM competed against 36 other teams in the College Unions Poetry Slams Invitational, the national spoken word competition at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. weSLAM advanced to the semi-finals and snagged both the Spirit Award and the award for Best Persona Poem, ultimately becoming the 7th-highest-ranked poetry team in the land of the free and the brave. But this is not what’s important here.