By Mae Ramirez, creative writing MFA student, may be tiny — standing just around 5-feet-tall — but her charisma and ability to silence a packed room makes up for lost height.
Ramirez’s slam poetry captured the attentions of Downtown Long Beach art gallery Exhibit [A] attendees during the Cal State Long Beach MFA Reading Series on Friday.
Her poems were performed alongside fellow MFA students, who also shared their works that evening. She also brings the Long Beach youth together with various youth art programs.
Ramirez belted through her poems, projecting her rhythmic expressions across the room for everyone to hear Her poems offered relatable topics, which are presented in dramatic fluctuations of prose. One piece, “Hail to you St. Christopher,” was written with her dad in mind. It tells a fictional story of a truck driver hanging himself. Her father, who is also a truck driver, is still alive.
“Sometimes I feel my dad really is dead,” Ramirez said. “I don’t see him that much when he is on the road.”
Ramirez bridged reality and fiction, usually going back and forth while writing poems.
“I like to lie a lot,” she admitted. “But in the end, you write what you know.”
Ramirez had never heard of slam poetry until two years ago, when she joined the CSULB Slam Team. She has competed regionally and nationally as part of the Poet’s Lounge on CSULB.
When not attending school, Ramirez brings the youth together as cofounder of ¡DUENDE! Long Beach. The group uses poetry, spoken word and music to let kids from 13- to 19-years of age express their creativity.
While one of the group’s main events this year is to compete using slam poetry at the Brave New Voices Festival in San Francisco, getting the youth to connect through expression is the main goal for Ramirez.
“The goal isn’t to have them win,” she said. “It no longer becomes about poetry; it becomes a gimmick.”
She also now works for an after school spoken word program at New Millennium Secondary School in Carson.
“Working with the youth is rewarding,” Ramirez said. “It humbles you and you are able to see a different perspective,” Ramirez said.
The MFA Reading Series is scheduled to have their next reading on March 16 at Exhibit [A], located at 517 Pine Ave.
