Nationally Renowned Poet Emcees North Central's MLK Poetry Slam

Nationally renowned poet Carlos Andrés Gómez, of HBO’s Def Poetry, emceed a Poetry Slam at The Union on Friday night to help students honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by celebrating his ideals.

More than 70 students of all races and creeds paid tribute to Dr. King's memory by gathering to discuss important social issues like racism, sexism and prejudice. 

Derek Sanderson, president of The Union, said North Central’s Black Student Association and The Union hold the Poetry Slam annually in the week surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. Day to commemorate the iconic leader. Sanderson said North Central has booked Gómez to emcee the event for the past three years.

“I think all his poems that you heard tonight come from his heart and are not anything that he’s creating,” Sanderson said. “They are all stuff that’s happened to him. When the audience hears him, they see it’s from his heart and that makes him real.”

Gómez, 30, a two-time International Poetry Slam Champion and a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, filled a subdued room with electric energy while delivering his poems. Gómez powerfully emoted pieces like “Words Worth” about how words can negatively affect people's self-esteem, and “Distinctly Beautiful” about how girls are assaulted by society’s misogynistic and sexually provocative messages on what makes a real woman.

A former public school teacher and social worker in New York and Philadelphia, Gómez said he decided to change career paths when social work overwhelmed him emotionally, adding that performers are a different type of educator.

“The big catalyst for me was at the end of my social work run, there was a lot of horrible stuff I saw with my clients," Gómez said. “One of my clients got life in prison, another passed away, one disappeared. It was really trying emotionally to manage that in my early 20s when I was trying to find myself. To me, art was the antidote to that pain.”

He wanted to commit himself to art because Gómez said he believes it is the only thing preventing us from tearing ourselves apart. He said he writes about real topics like racism, sexism, genocide and injustice.

“Art is ultimately revealing who you are in the most scary, bold, insane ways,” Gómez said. “That’s the art that’s riveting to me. Every time that I write or perform, I try to jump off that cliff and hope the audience comes with me off the cliff. When I reveal something that’s messed up about myself, others realize similar imperfections about themselves and then we could really have a conversion about that.”

Students also performed their original poems. Sophomore English major Maria Caballero won the student competition with her piece, “Judge Me.”

“I wrote it about a year ago when I felt like people I knew, even though they knew my circumstances, that they were judging me,” Caballero said. “I wanted to set them straight that they could do that, but I want to know what you’re saying because I want to know how to explain that to you.”

Elaine Cannell performed her piece, “Winter”—the first poem she said she has ever read in front of an audience.

“My poem is about having the ability to move on,” said Cannell, a freshman English/secondary education major. “I think in life, it’s really easy to take the things that have happened to you in your past and use them to prevent you from moving forward. Winter was a metaphor for that, about truly leaving it behind.”