On Wednesday, I attended a reading by my friend (and MFA alum) Aimee Nezhukumatathil. It was a little odd trying to sneak a photo during the middle of a (fairly quiet) poetry reading. I’d never been to the Music Center Concert Hall at Columbia before, and it’s a nice, intimate space.
In addition to Aimee, there were two other poets reading: John Murillo and Robyn Schiff. Murillo had a very engaging style to his reading, and there was one poem in particular that really jumped out at me. It was entitled “Enter the Dragon” and was this great reflection on when he was a kid, leaving the theater with his father. You can read a bit about the poem here.
Schiff also had a fairly interesting presentation/reading style, and read her work in this flowing, consistent manner that had you trying to both listen and keep pace at the same time. There was one poem about the Colt revolver that really caught my ear.
I wish I had recorded a bit of Aimee’s reading to share with you here. There was a great found poem she read which really got some great audience reactions. The poem was based off a series of emails she had received, that all seemed to come in around the same time.
Apparently, some high school teacher somewhere assigned Aimee’s book, and she got flooed with tons of emails from high school students asking her questions. In addition to their inquiries, they also told her things like how they didn’t think she was as good as Walt Whitman, and that she was too young to be a poet (this, coming from a high school student, no less).
Post-reading, Aimee talking to a student and signing a copy of her book.
Seeing Aimee on stage and reading was a nice throwback/reminder to the old MFA days, when I was in Columbus, OH and still writing poetry on a consistent basis. As grad students, I remembered how we used to read our poems in the basement of a bar, and seeing her now as an invited guest poet was a nice arc to trace. Pretty cool that my friend Aimee is also the poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of two books and an associate English professor.
I’ll say it again – definitely check out her work, both Miracle Fruit and At the Drive-In Volcano. I think she’s quite the poet, and hope you do as well.
