Keep up with Reacting Out Loud on Facebook and Twitter for information about upcoming events and how to get involved.
Editor's Note: Levi Todd writes opinion for the Daily News.
As a creative way to celebrate Valentine's Day, Two Cats Café hosted the poetry group Reacting Out Loud for an open mic night.
Twenty-five poets performed before a packed house of more than one hundred supportive audience members. Poems could be bittersweet, sappy or have no theme, and most focused on love and relationships.
Due to a complete coincidence in scheduling, all of the couples in the lineup performed one after another.
Poets read on a platform suspended over the entrance to Two Cats Café on the top level. Most read off of phones as photographers moved around the back, waiters and waitresses navigated the woodwork of the building and a cameraman recorded the event for Reacting Out Loud’s YouTube channel.
Despite many people eating at the Café, noise was kept to a minimum out of respect for the poets, and many audience members encouraged the poets when they were nervous or got stuck.
Levi Todd, founder of Reacting out Loud, said poetry readings are a great way to celebrate a holiday dedicated to relationships and emotions.
“Poetry is a way to share experiences that people either relate to or, if they don’t relate to them, learn about a new experience. That is what makes poetry so powerful,” Todd said.
While this was an open mic night and not a slam poetry competition, the audience was encouraged to participate as if it were, with validating feedback like cheers and snaps — and there were many throughout the evening.
Reacting Out Loud is not a Ball State student organization but a poetry organization that aims to serve the community. The group was started in May 2015 and began having readings at The Cup in the Village. Because the audiences have continued to grow, they now hold readings in Two Cats Café every month.
Parker Pickett, a poet who read at the open mic, has been writing for years and enjoys how reading his poems in public connects people.
Hunter Knight, another poet, has been writing since he was 5 and began keeping journals in high school. He has a different approach to poetry, writing to satisfy himself first and hoping to provoke his audience with aggressive language. In fact, he prefers no applause after his poems because that is a sign that his audience is engaged.
Reacting Out Loud encourages poets to be free to express themselves in a safe space without racism, sexism or other attacks on identity.
The event also had a tip jar for the organization, whose costs are increasing as they grow and set up a website. Fifty percent of the money raised will go to charity. The charity it's donating to this month is Black Lives Matter, in honor of Black History Month.
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