Friends, family, faculty and staff gathered together in the Kim T. Adamson Alumni House at Westminster College to support the debut of the 55th volume of Ellipsis April 26.
Ellipsis is a literary journal at Westminster College, highlighting poetry, creative writing and artwork submitted by Westminster students and guest contributors. Staff of the publication read aloud their favorite poems from this new volume.
Guests were treated to readings featuring stories about a flying pug, poems about resilience and faith and a play about a sexually frustrated toaster.
“[The event] was really interesting and nice,” said Renae Preston, a 22-year-old biology major. “Some [poems] were really funny. Which I wasn’t expecting because I’ve gone to some poetry events and usually, they are kind of somber with a little giggle here and there, but this was hilarious.”
Poetry, compared to prose writing in fiction and non-fiction allows you to play in the abstractions, in the grey areas, in the spaces that aren’t super clear, said Kate Wilson, an editor on Ellipsis and an English major at Westminster.
“I think that poetry offers a really unique ability to tell a story through metaphor and line breaks,” Wilson said, “[Poetry] just allows you to express a raw emotion in a way that more people can understand.”
Not everyone at the event held the same views on poetry and its accessibility.
“There are different kinds of poetry and some people would argue that poetry’s purpose is not to get a point across,” said Natasha Sajé, an English professor helped organize the event. “Some poetry is [accessible] and some of it isn’t. It is sort of like when you begin in any art form. You start with easy things and as you get better and better you get more sophisticated and you get more complicated.”
