By Angelina Hu and Pen Fang
The 20th annual Fall Poetry Reading was held on November 3rd in the auditorium. It was hosted by the East Literary Digest, which is overseen by Mr. Huber and co-editors Jonah Ruddock and Sophie Zhu. The event featured guest poet Noah Falck, the published author of the book Exclusions, and fifteen student poets.
Students were given the opportunity to read their poetry aloud to a live audience consisting of English classes and other student poets. The Reading was structured with Falck doing readings between groups of student readings. Aside from independent poems and Literary Digest club members, some of Mr. Huber’s Creative Writing students were featured in the reading as well, focusing on the art of ekphrastic poems. Ekphrastic poems explore visual art through poetry.
Falck also offered some interesting discussions on the poetic process during the reading. His poetry collection, Exclusions, focuses on the idea of a poem excluding a certain topic. In other words, he takes a subject like death, or fiction, or taxes, and writes a poem that dances around but “excludes” that subject. He likes to carry a small pocketbook with him and jot down notes on possible subjects to write about, taking notice of things as normally inconsequential as shadows, or the movement of clouds. This sort of unique brainstorming allows for the synthesis of his many creative and beautiful poems.
He also explained his inspiration for several of his poems. For example, “Poem Excluding Death” was crafted with Falck’s image of heaven having different “regions,” much like how a country has different states. Likewise, “Poem Excluding Modern Technology” was inspired by Falck’s own childhood.
Despite some minor difficulties with East’s new sound system, overall, the poetry reading this year was a resounding success and the Literary Digest hopes that all who attended thoroughly enjoyed it. We also hope that anybody interested in creative writing would join us for our next meeting hopefully later this month and contribute their art to a future issue.
