WILSON CHAPMAN: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Wilson Chapman. Thanks for tuning in. The Daily is collaborating with a selection of poets from The Slam Society, a performance poetry group on campus. In this podcast, Weinberg sophomore Kourtni McNeil reads and discusses her poem “Starfish.”

KOURTNI MCNEIL: “Starfish.”
I can make it anywhere.
Live in the smallest pocket of air and still I will never stop breathing.
Make a home for myself out of stone and echos
Bend the world into a melody that can accommodate me
I don’t need friends.
I have the company of oxygen and my skin is too sharp for you anyway.
You’d never be able to pick me up properly anyway
Briny baby body you could never be conscious of anyway
I’m a seastar.
Farther away than any constellation you point out on your skymap that could never capture all of the blue
It tries to
I know if you try to you could maybe fit your fingers around all of my edges
But I’m here to tell you that it’s pointless.
Because at the end of the day I will wash up wartorn and hungry
For everything I will never be able to swallow
Fighting with every rigid part of me to assert that I am alive and only one of us could ever survive with so little.

CHAPMAN: Can you tell me a bit about the poem that you just presented?

MCNEIL: I basically wrote it after two and a half weeks of having writer’s block and not really having anything to write about. It kind of started off with kind of a minimalist lifestyle of not needing anyone to survive, of being able to just make it on your own. And I thought of a starfish cause it’s something that’s kind of alive, but kind of you don’t really see it as alive. It doesn’t move or anything. But it’s still sustaining, it’s still making it. And I think, the way I see the poem kind of leaves it up to the reader if whether that’s an ideal way to live like, if you actually don’t need anyone else. And if whether that’s a good way to live or if this is kind of a cry for help. And I think towards the end of the poem, it’s kind of playing around with that idea that someone is reaching out to you.

CHAPMAN: So I guess, when you’re writing poetry, how do you get your inspiration and what does your writing process look like?

MCNEIL: I get inspired by a ton of things. I try to find a lot of metaphors. So I’ll see something like the way snow falls certain times, and that reminds me of like, stuffed animal beads falling out of a toy or something like that. So just like, thinking of everyday things and comparing them and bringing them together I think is a large tool that I try use in a lot of my writing.

CHAPMAN: How long have you been interested in poetry? I guess, what caused you to start writing and develop your talent?

MCNEIL: I really liked poetry when I was a kid. Fourth grade, I think I remember we would have poetry assignments, and I originally liked it cause it didn’t have to rhyme. So I thought you could just like, write words down and it would be a poem and no one could say anything to you about it. So I kind of really liked the freedom of it. But I think now, especially after taking poetry classes and things, seeing more of the structure of poetry and some of the rules, I think more of the fun comes from knowing what some of the rules are and breaking them to make something really unique and special.

CHAPMAN: Talk a little bit more about Slam Society, and I guess how has Northwestern sort of helped you develop your voice as a poet?

MCNEIL: Well first, Northwestern Slam Society, I’ve been a part of it since I’ve came to Northwestern fall quarter freshman year. Basically we all get together once a week, and we workshop poems and we see what’s going on in the city to look at poems and try to workshop there. And we do an open mic every quarter. I have grown so much as writer just through a lot of different avenues that Northwestern has provided for me. Just having opportunities on campus that are for writers, I think there is a lot of those, and I have definitely been able to take advantage of that. Just like having deadlines, having things to actually put your work on or people to show your work to, are avenues to express yourself, and I think I’ve really found that at Northwestern.

CHAPMAN: To wrap this up, can you share with me an experience you had performing poetry on campus that was particularly memorable, particularly meaningful to you?

MCNEIL: Yeah I would say the first open mic I did with Slam Society was really fun. We did it around a theme of home. I performed for the first time one of my other favorite poems called “Have You Seen A Girl.” It has a lot of hand motions and things in it, and I think it’s really fun. It’s the first poem that I wrote coming to Northwestern, it’s the first poem that I wrote here at college. I don’t know, I really connect with it just cause it’s basically about finding yourself or finding people to lean on or being there for people that you love, even if they seem like they’re OK, they might not be OK. And so, I think just writing poems like that, about life experiences that I feel like a lot of people can connect with, and I myself know that I do connect with, are some of my favorite things to write and especially some of my favorite things to perform.

CHAPMAN: Thank you for listening. Be sure to check out our other podcasts featuring student poets. I’m Wilson Chapman, and I’ll see you next time.

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