Every Thursday at 7 p.m., the U’s spoken word poetry club, USpeak, puts on a writing workshop in the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Building. The meetings are open to all students and are not exclusive to members. Those who attend will explore pieces they write and receive feedback from attendees.
“It’s really an open space to work on what you are most comfortable with,” said Carey McComas, a junior in English and one of the club organizers. USpeak is very relaxed, but those who attend should expect quality advice from peers. Participating club members are well-versed in poetry structure and techniques. Not only do they critique writing, but they also comment on performance style. The poems workshopped at USpeak are read aloud and performed in the typical spoken word style. Everything from word choice to imagery to artistic meaning is analyzed, and there is an array of constructive criticism offered as well as uplifting encouragement.
“Everybody has their own voice and their own style, and they communicate in a certain way, and it’s so interesting to see that across the board for everybody,” McComas said. “We’re all connected by this thing called poetry, but it’s so subjective and something that’s so different for each individual person.”
McComas joined USpeak last spring when she was at a community event and one of the members, Kari Lindsey, who is now known as the “slam master,” approached her and asked if McComas would be attending the U.
“She asked me to start writing for [the group] so that I could participate in the collegiate perfor- mance and competition that happens in New York,” McComas said. “And I did.”
USpeak is open for anyone who would like to give poetry a try. The club urges people who are interested in or curious about poetry to check out their slams so they can get a feel for what USpeak is about.
“I’m one of those crazy people who think that sometimes education can hamper creativity, so I love how anybody can do this,” McComas said.

“It’s pretty hard to make someone laugh, cry and everything in between in three minutes and ten seconds, I get it. But it’s such an amazing experience once you get there. It’s not something that’s easy. It’s something you work for and work on. It’s something you have to practice. It’s a way to discipline yourself but at the same time have that flexible creativity with it as well.”
As for variety, USpeak has plenty. Many poets write in different styles and about different topics. Everyone is free to write what they choose and are encouraged to showcase ideas that induce a response from the listener or reader. The club has members from an assortment of majors and is a place for many students to get their creative fix.
Aside from the writing workshops, the club also participates in competitions throughout the poetry community and puts on slams about once a month at the U.
One of the other core organizers, Nick Shifrar, better known as Organik, was one of the first members of USpeak and got involved his freshman year of college after he went to the Salt Lake Arts Festival and discovered there was a community of spoken word poets in the city.
“There were four people I coordinated with there, and we were like, ‘Let’s do a poetry group!’ ” he said. “And so we set it up and then there was a lot of flux with the members. Then Brian Gray came in, who was a stable member of the slam poetry community of the city. He wanted to set up a team and send them to a national competition. So then we structured it around that and started doing performance poetry at the U.”
Members of the club are people who love writing and listening to poetry, and to many it is both the poetry and the people involved that is most rewarding.
“When someone creates something and they express themselves, be it politically or romantically or just in a raw, human way … it’s something that is very rewarding to be able to listen to and immerse myself in,” Shifrar said. “Sometimes poetry is very solitary. There are people who may write something, and it just sits and dies. This is a writing community — it keeps our poetry alive.”
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