By BRIANA SPINA
Layout Editor
Last year before students got sent home due to the pandemic, professor Daniel Nester’s Poetry in Performance class was preparing to perform their midterm reading at the Saint Rose Theatre to a live, in-person audience. Now, after a year of adapting to virtual learning, Nester’s class held their midterm poetry reading over Zoom. The performance took place Thursday, March 25 at 7 p.m. with a virtual audience of students, alumni, parents, and even Nester’s mom.
Nester has been teaching Poetry in Performance since spring 2006, and he described the virtual class as a “stripped down” version of the original in-person class.
Due to COVID-19, the class is not currently able to go on field trips to see other poets read. Still, the students can perform covers of other poets’ work for class assignments. Nester said that the poetry he chose for the students to cover was informed by current events, such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo.
“There used to be a debate whether poems could be political or poets could be political,” said Nester. “It goes in waves, granted, but now it’s like, if you’re going to bother to write poems, they should be ones that actually engage with the world.”
This sentiment was reflected in the students performances, with some reading poems about COVID-19 and the year 2020 in general. Others wrote about more personal experiences.
Carlo Contessa performed a poem entitled “Letters for my Naysayers,” which was about how obstacles pertaining to their mental and physical health made people in their life doubt their ability to succeed.
“I’ve gone on to prove all of them wrong because I knew I was better than my circumstances, and this poem is a way for me to get in their face and tell them ‘I told you so,’” said Contessa in an email. “There’s nothing wrong with bragging a little bit when it’s warranted.”
Contessa said that they liked being able to share parts of themself with the audience. Kaylina Calzado similarly said that she wanted her emotions to show when she performed her deeply personal piece.
“I wanted people to see me, emphasis on ‘see,’ and not think it was just some act. I wanted people to believe that this went beyond simply getting a good grade but rather it showing my truest self,” said Calzado in an email.
Calzado, an English major who has been writing since age 13, described her writing and editing process as “solving a puzzle for my own feelings.” Originally, the poem that she performed was two separate poems, but inspiration struck her when she saw the two poems next to each other in the notes app on her phone. She described some of the inspiration for her poem, saying that the parts she wrote in Spanish are a nod to her Dominican roots, yet she tends to feel inadequate because she understands Spanish, but struggles to speak it.
“This poem explores that feeling of not rising up to what people expect of you and what I expect for myself, and feeling incredibly alone amidst all of those expectations,” said Calzado.
Despite this, she said she finds “comfort” in the language because it is a core part of who she is.
Calzado had never performed poetry in front of an audience before this reading, though she has had experience singing to a crowd in middle school. She said that until now, most of her poetry was “private,” written without the intention to show others or read aloud. The advantage to a Zoom performance, she said, was that it calmed her nerves to be able to “pretend that there weren’t that many faces looking at [her].”
Contessa, on the other hand, said that they had a lot of experience performing both at Saint Rose and in the Albany area. They said that they prefer performing in person as opposed to virtually, “mostly because it’s easier to convey your emotions through the poem and reel in the audience better if you have them right in front of you, hearing you raw and real.” Contessa continued to say that performing virtually “creates a fun challenge, because you have to work a lot harder to embody your performance and capture the hearts of your audience.”
Michael Trageser, an alumnus and friend of Contessa, held a similar opinion about Zoom performances.
“The communal aspect of poetry readings – the audible snaps between verses, the reactions of the person next to you, and the impact of hearing pieces in person – are lost when translated to a virtual platform,” Trageser said in an email.
Trageser, who graduated in May 2020 with a degree in Communications and a concentration in Film and New Media, took Creative Writing with Nester his sophomore year. He described the class as “engaging” and said that it improved his writing skills.
“I still use a lot of the feedback I received in that class when writing today,” said Trageser. Currently, Trageser has been writing scripts, blog posts about music, and song lyrics for his punk rock band Stiglitz.
CJ Odendahl, another student in the Poetry in Performance class, took a humorous approach to their poem. Odendahl has been writing since they were in eighth grade, and they had experience performing for their high school creative writing class, which they said makes it a bit easier to perform virtually. They explained that being by themself in their room allows them to “focus on the material rather than the crowd.”
Nester said that preparing for this virtual performance has been different than preparing for in-person performances. He said that his notes used to be pertaining to students’ full body language and vocal projection in the context of being on stage. Now, the students must fit all of those theatrics into their on-screen Zoom box.
Contessa described Nester’s editing process and the class as “challenging,” yet rewarding. They said that they took the class to restart their writing habits.
“It’s been great reinvigorating an old passion,” they said. “I certainly take a different look at how I write poetry now, and I’m pretty happy about it. My poetry is a lot cleaner and put together.”
Calzado also said that she has grown because of the course.
“Remembering how much work I put into writing it and seeing it in all its final glory…reminded me I was the only person who could fully emote how this poem makes me feel and that there was no right or wrong way to express myself as I performed,” she said. “I ultimately had to learn how to trust in myself and let the words guide me as I spoke it out loud for others to see and also maybe interpret for themselves.”
Nester said that he has attended and performed at virtual readings. Carol Jewell, a librarian at the University of Albany and an alumna of Saint Rose’s Creative Writing MFA program, said she attended the midterm reading because she misses going to in-person poetry readings.
“The Capital District has a huge literary community; in the days before the pandemic, there would be one or more literary events every night,” she said in an email. “Our cup overflowed, as we tried to decide which event(s) to attend. I look forward to that being the case again.”
Jewell attended the MFA program at age 52 after having already completed her Master’s degrees in Teaching English as a Second Language and in Library Science.
As advice for aspiring writers, Jewell said, “READ, read, and then read some more. You can’t write well until you read. You will gain, from reading, an understanding of how language works, and why that is important for writing your poetry. Network with other writers, learn from them. Go to every open mic and poetry reading that you can…If you don’t live [in the Capital Region], find poets and writers in your hometown, and hang out with them.”
Jewell’s first collection was published by Clare Songbirds Publishing Houseand is called “Hits and Missives,” available for purchase here: https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/ MFA alumni’s Master’s theses are available to read at the Neil Hellman Library. Jewell also has work upcoming in the “Pine Hills Review.”
Anyone can find the Poetry in Performance class on Instagram and TikTok @stroseperfpo, as well as Poetry in Performance at Saint Rose on Facebook.
“This experience, as every other in the past year has been, was inarguably abnormal,” said Odendahl. “But to be able to perform for people for the first time in a year and a half, and hopefully cause at least one laugh, is freeing on levels I’d yet to experience.”
