By Angelina Tang
On Thursday, November 16, the annual Fall Poetry Reading was held in the auditorium during 6th and 7th period with guest poet Ben Brindise hosting. The Reading was a unique experience as Brindise roused the audience with his passionate delivery and enthusiasm for the student readers’ work.
Brindise is a slam poet who originated from Buffalo and graduated from Medaille College. He has represented Buffalo in the National Poetry Slam for many years and has helped take the team to ranking as high as 9th nationwide. He has also published a chapbook titled ROTTEN KID, a short fiction microchap titled Secret Anniversaries, and poetry collections Those Who Favor Fire and Those Who Pray to Fire. He’s a teaching artist at the Just Buffalo Writing Center and has done many poetry events in the past, reading spoken word poetry to audiences in a variety of locations. He stated during the Q&A portion of the Fall Poetry Reading that he prefers reading for a long time to a small audience and for a short time to a large audience. As he puts it, it’s all about capturing and holding their attention–something difficult to do when you have a large number of people.
The energy Brindise brought to this year’s Reading was unprecedented. He started off the show by laying down some ground rules to make the event more interactive–if the audience heard a line that really resonated with them, they could snap, stomp their feet, or hum an appreciative “mmh.” Much of the audience loved this and inevitably ended up overusing “mmh,” to which Brindise later laughed and called us out as we hummed to the opening line “I was eleven,” of one of his poems.
The student poets reading were headed off by Miles Seifert and his poem “Magnetic,” followed by the Literary Digest editors Pen Fang and Angelina Tang. Vipanchuka Satheeshkumar and Dylan Hollis read on behalf of two group poems, while Ishaan Ombase, Michael Panaro, Patrick Horsmon, and Connor Sun read their smooth-flowing group poem together. Anna Meyer performed next, followed by Kathryn Goula, who memorized her poem. Jaxson Lichner, Junaid Khan and Brian Xu performed next. The poems this reading were sectioned by general theme–Cole Stinson, Lana Manciu, Sami Ali, and Narges Salah all read poems related to love and youth. Christina Silva, Ani Senthil Kumar, Lauren Wong, and Aryanna rounded off the reading with their lovely work, and Brindise ended seventh period with a reading of his prose work and a Q&A. The 2023 Fall Poetry Reading was a resounding success. Congratulations to all of the amazing readers once again! It takes bravery to go up on stage and read your heart out in front of all of your classmates. You were all fantastic. Also, if you’re interested in what Ben Brindise is working on, he’s been dabbling in playwriting with the script Everything You’ve Ever Loved will Rust. He has also been working on a novel titled Ketchum–keep your eyes peeled for it!
