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Photoc courtesy of Ms. Avelin
It’s the click, click, click of her heels that commands the presence of room 101 on Monday afternoons. It’s her t-shirt of an etching of a t-shirt that hints at the type of girl charmed by irony and metaphor. The assured voice of Tatiana Bennett (11-1) commences Masterman’s poetry club. “Take out your poems,” she instructs and I become thrown into the middle of the minds around me: the piano, the Masterman experience, nostalgia, and a worry for this rumbling new generation’s mark on history are conveyed through plays on words. Just like that, the unassuming group of students feel like they are onto something important.
The tone of poetry club is lighthearted and encouraging. “I wrote this last night,” club member Maeve Zeleniak (11-4) admits, while Helena Saven (10-4) shares a little something from her journal. They’ve named themselves the Poetry Pancakes, a sentimentality that attributes to the first poem the group had ever written together, taking words from a random word generator. Each week, members are assigned to self-compose their own poems based on a prompt to read aloud for receive peer feedback. “End with a bang, don’t fizzle out,” Tatiana advises one of her poet peers.
The group’s strive for improvement is motivated by their preparation for the Philadelphia Slam League Competition. Running from February through May, competition is taken seriously by poetry people throughout Philadelphia. Every other Friday after school at Parkway Central Library, Masterman’s Poetry Slam Team prepares three original works for three rounds of poetry oration in competition with other teams from schools across the city. Scored on the criteria of writing and performance, the competition ups the ante by mandating group poems for the third round. On the night of Masterman’s debut to the league, Caleb Townshend (11-4) describes the positive experience as a performer onstage: “I got a ‘Good job, KING!’ and few snaps here and there.”
This wasn’t the first time a poetry club was attempted at Masterman, yet the old team, led by Ms. Hoskins, had dissipated in 2016 following the leave of the seniors. It cannot be said that this is surprising, for creative efforts at Masterman often struggle to keep their standing and are regarded as secondary to academics. Yet, poetry’s importance to Bennett made it a natural next step to reestablish poetry club: “I’ve been writing since I was five. I would staple pages together and then write stories, she begins. “Poetry is MY outlet for me to express. Throughout times in my life when I felt alone, when I felt misunderstood, like whether it be based off of race, based off of family things, like people wouldn’t listen, people wouldn’t understand…All of a sudden, it was like a switch would flip and they would get it. And it wasn’t just through words, but it was like they could feel it.”
“There is almost this instinct for poetry in a lot of people...With poetry, you know, you can let it all pour out,” club sponsor Ms. Avelin conveys. Masterman now has a Philly Slam Team of members who dances through language to project their internal emotions, and Bennett has been building the foundations of it. On Monday 3rd period, Masterman poets gather together in room 101 and they welcome new voices.
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