Seats in the Pere Marquette Room in the Kirkhof Center were occupied by poetry lovers and members of Grand Valley State University’s chapter of To Write Love on Her Arms at Tuesday’s poetry slam.

Sierra DeMulder, who became involved with TWLOHA this past summer, led the poetry slam at GVSU.

DeMulder is an internationally touring performance poet and educator. According to her website, she is a two-time National Poetry Slam champion and the author of “The Bones Below” and “New Shoes on a Dead Horse.” She is the recipient of a 2014 McKnight Fellowship, and her work has been featured on NPR, Huffington Post, The Advocate and more.

“What I love most about them is that they promote dialogue – things we’ve been taught shouldn’t be talked about – and a lot of my talking comes in the form of writing,” DeMulder said.

Her slam poetry session consisted of poems about overcoming mental illness and suicide, Katy Perry’s song that wrongly makes fun of gays, a dad who is terrified to buy tampons for his daughter but does it anyway because he loves her, as well as poems about death, Alzheimer’s and her mother.

“A lot of healing has come from me writing about how I got here and where I’m going,” DeMulder said in an introduction to a poem she wrote about her sister’s struggles. “What isn’t always talked about is the people around us and how they’re affected or about how it feels to love someone who’s healing. I’ve had the blessing to love someone who’s healing and it’s been a wild ride, but I wouldn’t change anything.”

DeMulder also talked about her connection with TWLOHA and how her love for the organization came from the first poem she wrote about her struggles and healing. She said her poem ended up on YouTube and, as the video got more views, she felt shame and anxiety and felt that she needed to take it down.

“The most magical thing started happening,” she said. “I was getting messages from strangers across the world who said they couldn’t stop crying or didn’t feel alone because of my video. They told me about their struggles and hardships. Because I shared, they felt they could share and it was mutual healing.”

“I continue to this day to get messages about that poem and so as I’ve gotten better I started to think that I had this venue of people who found me, and I felt I could say something to them and that’s where my inspiration came from,” DeMulder said.

Her mom, she said, was the one who helped her get better.

“My mom once told me, if you ever have a bad thought about yourself, picture yourself as a baby,” she said. “Strangers thought you were cute and wanted to hold you and you were innocent and full of wonder and you didn’t have anything weighing you down. You’re always that person and nobody would speak to a child the way we speak to ourselves.”

She asked the audience to take this line of poetry with them: “Here, right now, you made it.”

To Write Love on Her Arms is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to raise awareness and create conversation about mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and addiction.

To learn more, go to www.twloha.com/. For more information about the GVSU group, visit www.orgsync.com/65409/chapter.

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