Nixa High School Poetry Club had an open mic night on Wednesday, Oct. 25 at the Black Box Theater from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. 

Some of the Poetry Club leaders who are helping to put together the open mic night are seniors Ava Collins, Addison Eden and Hannah Kasper. The club was also partnering with several other clubs and classes, widening the options for performing at the open mic night. 

“On top of Poetry Club, we have reached out to the performing arts department, largely with the band, the theater department, and some choir kids,” Collins said. 

The options for performing at the open night were open to many choices.

“It’s really anything you could remotely label as performing arts like spoken word, poetry, songs, plays, stories, anything you think makes you human and you feel comfortable sharing that humanity with the audience,” Collins said. 

The leaders of the Poetry Club have had the idea of an open mic night for a while now. 

“I have been the biggest fan of it ever since we started planning it back in June,” Collins said. “I love the idea of a community coming together to share the most raw and beautiful aspects of themselves and just making it about the humanity of it.” 

The Poetry Club usually has meetings about once a week. They write and share poetry with each other. 

Eden’s favorite poet is Tyler Knott Gregson.

“ I like the way that he humanizes nature and he just builds supper strong metaphors and that is my favorite thing to do whenever I’m writing,” she said. “I love metaphors. He is someone I look up to largely for inspiration in my poetry and how to write.” 

Poetry Club members not only write poetry but some of them live it.

“It like whenever personally to consider myself like a poet its like almost everything has to be of a poetic nature and its not even something that you like how can I make this poetic its just the way that your thoughts are organized and the words are coming together in your head,” Eden said. “Your putting them (the words) on the page and you just feel like this is the over arching picture of what I’m creating and this is how I want to create it. It’s just not something you can turn on and off. It’s just poetry is always there.”

“It’s like once that world has been opened up to you it becomes a part of you, and you, for better or for worse, are never able to escape it,” Collins said. 

Poetry Club is held in Briana Ashby’s room after school, on the third floor, room 320.