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Cody Benbow’s poem ideas come to him at random. A bus ride to campus, whether that be from South Campus or Rochester, can inspire his future pieces.

“It’s really a good way to kind of just distill all the chaos going on in your mind, especially over the past year,” said Benbow, a Syracuse University junior.

April is National Poetry Month, and during the pandemic some Syracuse University students have turned to poetry to heal and express their emotions about topics like stress, school or their love lives. Some poetry professors encourage their students to use poetry to discover something about themselves or the world around them.

It’s always poetry month for Brooks Haxton, an SU professor of English. The effects and isolation of the pandemic could be occasions for trying to express yourself, and some students are better at coping with their feelings when they see them written down, he said.

One of Benbow’s former SU English professors, Jules Gibbs, teaches poetry workshops and is the author of two books of poetry, including her recently published book “snakes & babies.”

Gibbs has been celebrating poetry month by attending poetry readings offered to SU students, faculty and staff over Zoom. She sees this month as a way to encourage those who are “poetry-curious” to participate in writing poetry.

Poem by Adrianne Morales Shannon Kirkpatrick | Presentation Director

She wants her students to push the boundaries of language, access their own strangeness and write something that will surprise them as they discover a new sense in all the nonsense.

“Poets are people who are on the cusp of language,” Gibbs said. “They’re pushing the outer edges of language, and therefore thought, all the time.”

For Benbow, every poem comes as a surprise, as sometimes the words seem to jump out of nowhere. He writes with politics and religion in mind, as he believes that voices are tools of protest.

“They admit that it’s not something you can make a living out of, but it’s definitely something that makes a life,” Benbow said.

To celebrate poetry month, The Downtown Writers Center also held multiple virtual poetry readings that are free and open to the public. Phil Memmer, the executive director of the arts branch of the YMCA of Central New York, founded the writing center in 2001.

Writing poems is a discovery process of figuring out existence and trying to find out what it means for him personally, Memmer said.

Some students tell Gibbs that writing poetry is a break in their week. Her exercises are meant to challenge students to practice and access a part of their mind that’s outside their normal experience. In her class, they aim for expansiveness of mind, thought and soul. Her students impress and move her by what they create, Gibbs said.

SU senior Adrianne Morales has been reading poetry since middle school. She started taking poetry classes in college, but her poetry assignments from Gibbs don’t feel like homework. Instead, they give her the time to sit with her thoughts and put them on paper.

Poetry is a way for her to write about her feelings without having to call it something explicitly, Morales said. As a broadcast and digital journalism major, poetry is a nice way for her to write about emotions, which she can’t always do with fact-based news.

“During the pandemic specifically, it’s a moment to get back in touch with yourself and stop worrying about all the assignments you have to do, just focus on your emotions, putting them on paper,” Morales said.

The more practice Haxton’s students get writing poems, the more expressive they become. He is always excited when a student who was hesitant and unsure of themselves with their poems begins to feel confident.

“Different people use poetry in different ways,” Haxton said. “Very often people feel drawn to poetry because there’s some feeling that they want to express and they’re not quite sure what it is or how to express it and poetry looks like a promising possibility for finding out.”

Published on April 28, 2021 at 11:03 pm