OSLAM: Oberlin's Slam Poetry
a space where issues plaguing this world can be addressed from a personal, raw standpoint. OSLAM marginalized voices, we aim to disrupt, and we bring people together. We hold weekly team meetin experience or a certain major to become involved with OSLAM — just a willingness to listen, learn visiting poets to campus and compete every year at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, th Jalen Woods (he/him), Junior Economics major I find myself basing a lot of work around extended metaphors and repetition. Additionally, the majority of my work has a heavy amount of rhyme, meter, and sonically-pleasing word choice. The themes I tend to have include: Blackness, indigestion, capitalism, fashion, and drug use. I draw from formative life experiences and ideas tied to my identity.
Hanne Williams-Baron (she/her), Senior Comparative American Studies major I think I write a lot about rage, joy, the color wheel, the strange, climate change and its grief, and wonder. I often find myself coming back to my fat body and the way it moves in the world, how others witness me, how I witness them.
Upcoming Events
Sarah Ridley (she/they), Senior Neuroscience major My process includes reading, watching, reading, and reading poetry, getting inspired and then writing whenever I have the time. Themes include: family, friends, summer, sex, mental illness, Blackness, childhood, butterflies. I usually draw a lot from my life experiences, the big and the mundane, the walks to class, the random hookups.
PHOTO BY PEARSE ANDERSON
The Officers
Amy Sahud (she/her), Junior Biology major My process mostly involves reading. I like to take notes on my phone throughout the day or late at night when I think of something. When I want to write, I like being somewhere where I feel really comfortable and like myself, and then I take all my thoughts and notes and try to fit them together, or I free-write and see what’s been building up in me. And most of the time, I write bad poems! That’s an integral part.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9 The Cat in the Cream • 8 p.m. Family Weekend Open Mic Night Featuring OSLAM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10 Wilder Hall room 115 • 2:30 p.m. Brown Resistance Writing Narratives meeting. BRWN is an open poetry workshop for poets of color. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17 Wilder Hall room 115 • 2 p.m. OSLAM club meeting – a poetry workshop open to all. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30 Finney Chapel • 8 p.m. OSLAM Grand Slam. We have been prepping all year for a chance to duke it out against each other in the biggest poetry slam of the year. For the first time this year, there will be special collaborations with two guest features. Tickets are $5.
Goals for the Future Our goals include publishing a chapbook, collaborating a lot with other artists/groups on campus, and focusing on strengthening our bonds. Also, doing Oberlin community outreach: organizing actions and creating a safe space for people to write, share, and enjoy poetry. We want to make sure that folks who need space to write and process and heal and celebrate themselves and their communities can through OSLAM.