Women’s Forum (WoFo) hosted its first Women’s Arts Festival, which featured poetry by special guest SLAM poet Lacey Roop, student performances and artwork by female Andover students this Friday, February 13 in the Underwood Room. “We wanted to put a spotlight on student art, especially female art,” said Tiana Baheri ’12, Co-Head of WoFo. Roop is a nationally renowned poet from Austin, TX, who has performed for thousands of people around the country. Her poems at the festival captured a wide range of topics, including gender, childhood, fairy tales, identity and inspiration. Several of her poems focused on labeling people according to different religions or genders and how this labeling causes separation between people. As Roop read her SLAM poetry to the audience, her words seemed to channel her emotions as she related her own personal experiences to her poems. Among the poems that Roop read, the poem “Gender is a Universe” illustrates how some people often stereotype and categorize gender according to hairstyles or outfits. Roop stated in her poem, “people’s sexual preference doesn’t diminish the fact that we are still human.” Roop continued in her poem, reading, “I’m tired of having to explain myself./ I don’t wanna be distinguished as gay, straight, lesbian, queer, dude or dyke/ just human/ because gender really is a universe/ and we need to accept that we are all but mere stars/a part of one galaxy.” During the reading, Roop also used music to complement some of her poems, and explained some of the inspiration behind her poems throughout the evening. When Roop read the poem “Waves in Veins,” background music invoking a sense of an ocean, accentuated the meaning of her reading. Roop read from her poetry, “Who is to tell you who you should love?/Who is to tell who you should be?/Who is to tell you what is real and what to believe?…I know what I feel and/I’m beginning to understand who I am/I’m just a girl./Who keeps the ocean in my ribs and the waves in my veins/despite all of the terrible things that people say it contains.” To keep her poetry reading interactive, Roop had the audience snap their fingers whenever they noticed a clicking rhythm in her poetry. Roop said about SLAM poetry, “The thing about SLAM poetry is that the crowd can very much participate; it’s an interactive way to share poetry. I picked some of my favorite ones and some of my new poems, as well as some old favorites too.” Student musical and theatrical performances preceded Roop’s reading. Madeleine Lippey ’14 opened the Festival by introducing her campaign that carries a similar message. Lippey said, “I started an organization called the ‘Do Write Campaign’ and it’s an online literary magazine where kids can submit whatever they’re passionate about … and for girls to discuss issues pertaining to the future of female empowerment.” After Lippey, Tasmiah Ahmad ’14 performed Adele’s song “Someone Like You.” Ahmad said, “My friend, Farris [Peale ’14], helped to coordinate this festival, and she asked me to sing today, and I chose the song ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele because she’s a famous artist and seems like a very strong woman.” Ceylon Auguste-Nelson ’12, Miranda Haymon ’12 and Margaret Curtis ’12, all members of Andover’s improvisational comedy troupe, Under the Bed, played an interactive game “No You Didn’t,” in which Haymon yelled “No You Didn’t!” to the two other members when she felt the improvised lines could be better. The three Under the Bed members also played “Da Do Run Run,” a game in which some of the audience members’ names were used to create rhyming lines. The Festival incorporated the theme of female representation in art and music in all the performances, and artwork by female Andover students hung on the walls of the Underwood room to complement the theme. Kate Chaviano ’12, Co-Head of WoFo said, “The Arts Festival turned out to be a lot of work. It’s because of awesome people who submitted art and the support of tons of people [who made] this possible. And along with that was inviting Lacey Roop.” Baheri added, “Our inspiration to do this festival was that we don’t think student art in general is being showcased enough, and we noticed art on this campus does tend to be dominated by girls in some areas, and in others, girls are underrepresented, like in comedy or Under the Bed.”
