Oliver Thrist sits in the Stevenson cafeteria when something catches his eye. He notices a strongman competition being shown on a nearby TV.

“I can’t believe these guys are lifting tires over their heads,” Thrist said, a junior corporate communication major. “This is crazy.”

He was there to discuss Poetic Asylum, a student organization he founded in 2007 and of which he is the vice president.

Some people enjoy hoisting massive objects into the air; Thrist likes poetry. He writes it, performs it as spoken word and composes hip-hop lyrics. He has since he was 10. So once he got to NIU and realized there wasn’t an outlet for poets on campus, he started Poetic Asylum.

“Our motto is we’re lyrically insane” – hence the organization’s name, Thrist said. “We’re crazy with our words. We’re not afraid to speak what we really feel: True expressions, man, true expressions to the fullest.”

Poetry seems like it would be the furthest thing from most college students’ minds, but a 2006 Poetry Foundation study found it’s “appreciated by a broad and demographically diverse portion of society.” And though it seems like the advent of the Internet would have been a hindrance to its popularity, some say the opposite is true.

“For readers of poetry, it is as popular now as it has ever been,” said English professor Amy Newman. “There are more presses – particularly, small, independent presses – for both books of poetry and literary journals and online, an abundance of poetry journals, blogs and numerous collaborative e-poetry and digital media sites. It’s vibrant.”

Some people are artistic, and then there’s Poetry Asylum member Alexandrea Reed, a freshman clinical laboratory sciences major. During the course of about 30 minutes in the Gallery Lounge last week, she performed a spoken word poem, rapped an original hip-hop song and played a nearly 10-minute instrumental piano track she wrote.

She can also sing and dance.

“A lot of our poetry has a meaning or message,” she said of Poetic Asylum. Reed performed a poem Thursday night “about stopping black on black violence and becoming more unified as a people,” she said.

Reed, whose poetry name is JayMenai, has noticed that “this year, poetry is the big thing.”
The Poetry Foundation study also found that 64 percent of adult readers think people should read more poetry, its “readers tend to be sociable and lead active lives,” and 80 percent of its readers, including Thrist and Reed, first discovered it as children.

Reed said poets on campus need “to get out there and get involved.”
“If they’re like me, if they want to see changes, sitting at home isn’t going to get you anywhere,” she said. “You have to get out to make changes. It starts with you.”

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