Lacey Roop took the stage on the night of Friday, Feb. 19 in the Last Chapter Pub with her slam poetry. CAPE put on the event and it was co-sponsored by the Deborah L. Coffin Women’s Center, Student Activists for Gender Equality, and the Office of Diversity Initiatives. Roop read some of her poems that centered on themes of gender, sexuality, and the power of women. Roop was born in Mississippi, but she has spent the last eight years living in Texas, and is in the middle of her Do Good Be Better Tour giving performances around the United States.
Roop kicked off the night with introducing the crowd to what slam poetry is through an anecdote of her birth, which morphed into a poem about feeling too much. Music caught the crowd as the story shifted into the poem.
The unusual nature of this story turned poem was described as having formed out of how Roop will sometimes write short stories that somehow become poems, and vice versa.
One particular poem she presented, “A Lesson from Third Graders,” explained how her parents discussed ways to make her realize that she is a girl and not a boy. Subjects like this, as well as how love has nothing to do with gender, were spoken through personal anecdotes within the poems at times.
Though Roop claimed to not be a funny person, she was caught slipping witty lines in between her poems during her hour-long performance. Music also continued to run behind some of the poems as an additive to the power of her words.
Her time on stage was certainly a performance and not just a recital of words. Roop made it possible to get excited about words as shown by the cheering of those in the audience. Sophomore Ericka Broderick said, “I’ve never seen a slam poet before and that is the best way to describe Lacey. Her poems truly slammed my perspective on society and left a mark unlike any other.”
Roop’s poetry focused on particular topics, such as love, gender, and imagination, which allowed a diverse crowd able to appreciate the work of art that slam poetry can be.
