South and East Hills came together at Mystic Water Kava Bar and Yoga Studio on Saturday, February 6. Ithaca College’s Spit That! and Cornell University’s The Swoopers and Bashers traded off performances in a spoken word competition that had the bar packed to capacity. Literally -- some audience members listened from the room over, crowding the bar area, and others braved the cold to watch through the outside door.
Eight poets from each team performed. From Spit That!: freshman Ahshar Williams; sophomores Ava Bryan and Hannah Livernois; juniors Michaela Abbott, Toni-Marie Landy, Max Sarmiento and Jocelyn Suarez; and senior Christopher Rose; and from The Swoopers and Bashers: freshmen Alfie Rayner and Rachel Whalen; sophomores Alex Rodriquez, Andrés Vaamonde, and Ben Sword; juniors Jessica Reuter and Eva Jahan; and senior Ayman Atani.
At the end of the night, Ithaca’s Spit That! won by a 2-1 judge's vote.
While Spit That! will celebrate their 10-year anniversary next fall, Cornell's Slam Poetry club was founded this year by president Eva Jahan and members Andrés Vaamonde, Jessica Reuter, and Alex Rodriquez.
"Our main motivation behind registering as a club came from our desire to provide a safe and open space for people to use Spoken Poetry as a form of expression," said Jahan.
President of Spit That! and senior, Mary Oliver, said Ithaca and Cornell have been talking about bringing their artists together since last year.
"Our club is a very loving, supportive space so we thought it would be nice to change it up with some friendly competition," Oliver said.
"The event overall was overwhelming, in the best kind of way!" said Jahan, who performed her poem entitled, "Sweet Tooth."
"We'd never experienced that kind of support or enthusiasm at any given event," she continued. "Spoken word has this amazing ability to open doors for everyone -- in a given time and space, everyone in the room is rid of their inherent nature to judge others for what they say and do. It's a movement."
Judge Jaime Warburton, Assistant Writing Professor at Ithaca College, recognized the depth of content showcased during the performances. Both IC and Cornell teams, she said, explored topics like "race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, mental health, gender, institutional and structural injustices...yet not in a humorless fashion."
Both teams had the audience laughing and snapping in a fiery of approval.
Ultimately, Warburton deemed Spit That! winner due to its strength as a collective voice and "the performers' abilities to mesh solid, thoughtful poems with burning performances."
"It felt real," Warburton said.
Liza Flum, lecturer in Cornell's English Department, had Cornell trumping Ithaca by one point despite the fact that Warburton and judge Ryan Chamberlain of Buffalo Street Books, named Ithaca as the winner.
"The event seemed to be a huge success!" Flum said. "The overall level of writing was outstanding and I was moved to tears by several poems, which I didn't expect at all."
Junior Jessica Reuter of The Swoopers and Bashers who performed her poem "Blackout," also reflected on the intensity of the words spoken.
"I think all of the poems were riddled with truth and emotion," she said. "Each poet at this event was reaching out saying you don't have to go through your problems alone and you have a voice."
Discussing her team specifically, Reuter said, "Most of our poems were used to bring a voice to problems we believe should be talked about more."
Also a member of Cornell's team, sophomore Andrés Vaamonde performed his poem "Balls."
When asked what he thought set his team apart from Ithaca's, he said, "Spit That!, I found, engages in that typical slam poetry sound. We tend to diverge a bit toward the slightly more unorthodox."
"This might be a product of our amateurishness," Vaamonde continued, "but I also think it is one of intention. Our events, while focused in poetics, often incorporate several other types of performance including comedy, music, drama, performance art--you name it. In that sense, we lean a bit further away from spoken word."
Vaamonde said he was humbled by the turnout at the event and that seeing, "so many people spend their Saturday evening listening to poetry reminded me of the power maintained in the form."
Spit That! sophomore Hannah Livernois rang in the performances for the night with her poem "The Sistine Closet," a lamentation of Michelangelo's inability to be open about his homosexuality and how such burden still holds true for the queer community today.
"The message that I wanted to get across was that even though we've come a long way in the past couple years, and even though I can now get married in all fifty states, we are still facing some of the same exact things that Michelangelo faced all those hundreds of years ago," Livernois said. "Our fight is far from over."
She said that she had nothing but positive feelings about sharing the stage with The Swoopers and Bashers.
"When they took the stage I was absolutely blown away by how much raw talent they all had," Livernois said.
Being the last performer, she admitted to having some concerns about her responsibility for setting the mood for the event's conclusion--the mood audience members would carry with them back to their respected dorms, apartments, and homes. But her words left an unwavering mark, as she recited, "I wonder if Heaven exists. I wonder if God was waiting for you at the gates, if he looked at you and said, 'Don’t listen to them, of course you can come in, of course you can come out now.'"
"The immediacy of an audience that interacts and snaps and gasps in the middle of your performance is so validating and reassuring," Livernois said. "Every snap is an 'I understand you.' Every snap says, 'Your story is not going unheard any longer.'"
The success of the Slam Poetry event exceeded expectations of both teams. It proved that when two hills come together, they can make one mountainous voice.
