On Nov. 7, following Donald Trump being declared winner of the presidential election, Grand Valley State University senior Bran Hurst hosted an impromptu community poetry reading at the Language Resource Center (LRC). With the help of GVSU student Sophie Bytwerk and LRC staff, the poetry reading provided a space for students to express themselves together instead of feeling alone.
During the event, 15 students, faculty and staff shared their thoughts through art, poetry and songs. The turnout filled every chair in the LRC, and according to Hurst, served to uplift fellow students.
“All of my friends were being very pessimistic, and I wanted to redirect that energy into something with a little bit more agency,” Hurst said. “I wanted to help people feel like they can do things, and I wanted to remind myself that I can do things to help people.”
Bytwerk shared Hurst’s sentiments, recognizing that many students sought a place to mourn and not feel alone.
“A lot of these people would’ve been home tonight, crying or mourning, (and) really just going through (the thought of) ‘What’s going to happen to me?’” Bytwerk said. “We’ve offered a space for them to feel safe, for them to feel anger and for them to feel all the things they might not be allowed to feel at home.”
Both Hurst and Bytwerk spoke at the event. Hurst opened the gathering with a reading of Cornelius Eady’s “All of the American Poets Have Tilted Their New Books” and Ross Gay’s “Giving My Body to the Cause.” Both are published works written during the previous Trump presidency.
“Being there for each other is the most crucial thing,” Hurst said. “(We need) to show up when our friends need support and help, and know our friends will show up and support us when we need it.”
Eliot Sutton, a GVSU student who attended the event, confirmed the event’s goal of community was met.
“I was very angry up to this point, and this gave me people to be angry with in a productive way,” Sutton said.
Another GVSU student who attended, Ellie Burgess, shared three poems that she felt would inspire hope in a room full of uncertainty.
“I really wanted to incorporate some of the difficulties we’re going through to remind people that we have gone through this before, and we will again, but we will always have this,” Burgess said. “We have each other, and we can keep moving forward.”
Hurst ended the event by sharing excerpts from Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” along with an expression of engagement and compassion for everyone in the room.
“I’m so excited that other people care and want to be there and can acknowledge the need for other people to be there for them,” said Hurst.
Bytwerk felt similarly refreshed and inspired by the camaraderie of readers and attendees.
“(It is an) insane thought that if we focus on the individual, everyone’s going to be okay,” Bytwerk said. “That isn’t how it’s ever worked and (that) isn’t how I want it to work. I don’t want to be strong and powerful as an individual. I want a community that is strong and powerful and I want to bounce off of them.”
Bytwerk and Hurst recognized the event as not just a time of support, but also as a time of rallying, as they encouraged students to continue to seek out community.
