FSU English department graduate students bring dishes of poetry to celebrate the Festival of the Creative Arts music, dance "party"

By Kaylee Morrow

On the first Friday night of February, the Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre on Florida State University’s campus hosted a fabulous party.

Throughout the hour, the lights would dim, poetry would be read, music would flow, and dancers would glide across the stage, encouraging people in attendance to open their hearts and minds to the sensory experiences.

“Poets at the Party” was the opening event of the university’s annual Festival of the Creative Arts, which began Feb. 6 and continued to March 1. Partygoers included family members and friends of FSU students, who enjoyed a night of artistic collaboration.

The performance featured five Department of English graduate students reading poems they each wrote to fit the authors’ own interpretation of a party. Following each reading was a musical composition of trombones and a choreographed dance, set to reflect the poem’s theme.

Each art form added a new layer of meaning to the one before it.

“It's really gratifying to see how artists in other mediums interpreted our work,” said English doctoral student Natalie Eleanor Patterson, who read her work “I Am the Only Thing Left Behind.”

Distinguished University Scholar of English Barbara Hamby, with support from festival director Iain Quinn and FSU’s Dedman College of Hospitality, primarily directed the festivities. Students from FSU’s College of Music and School of Dance provided the sounds and sights for the celebration.

The poets each interpreted Hamby’s “party” theme differently and composed a poem to fit their idea of that environment.

“My family is a huge inspiration for my poetry,” said doctoral student Christell Victoria Roach, whose poem “One Mic Stand, after Sam Cooke” encapsulated the emotions she associates with music and her family. “The poem can mean different things to different people, but for me it was a poem about my family.”

“Poets at the Party” also featured doctoral student Hugh Wilhelm reading “Dear Earth (XLIII),” doctoral student Caroline Laganas, who read “Champagne or Maggots?” and master's student Sophia Upshaw and her poem “Shania says, Let’s Go, Girls.”

Camille Pepper, an FSU undergraduate student who is double majoring in English-Literature, Media, and Culture and in dance, was also featured. She choreographed the dance to Upshaw’s poem.

For each of the five readings, a musical and dance performance followed. As soon as the lights dimmed on each group of dancers, the crowd erupted in a boom of applause, cheers, and shouts of performers’ names. This was the party everyone wanted to attend.

Once the entire performance ended and the party inevitably began to shut down, performers and audience members still lingered. At the edge of the stage, among the theater’s seats, and even in the lobby, partygoers continued a rhythmic hum of conversation, chatting about what they had just seen and offering accolades to the performers.

“You know what? I never know what it's going to be like—it's just high as a kite afterwards,” explained Hamby, as she stood with the crowd mingling around her. “You write something and then have people write music to it and dance to it.

“I mean, God, I think all the pieces are beautiful, but it comes together, and it was just more than those separate pieces.”

The graduate students also shared their thoughts and feelings following the show.

“Interesting is the best word to describe it,” Patterson said. “You're not going to see anything else like this on campus or in the greater community. That's how I was selling it to my friends. I said, ‘This is your this is your one chance to see a really just unique combination of experiences.’”

Laganas was ecstatic with the outcome of the “party.”

“It was incredible, especially to see all our poems come off the page and hear the music they created, as well as the dancers,” she said. “The dance was spectacular as was the energy of the audience.”

That night was the students’ first look at what the dance and music students put together to accompany their poems. Upshaw said that as a writer, she can sometimes feel hidden, almost as if she does not exist outside of the English department.

“It's so important to remember that the arts, at the core, are about collaboration,” she said. “To see their interpretation of my work meant a lot.”

The collaborations were a great opportunity for all the students to showcase their talents to a wide audience. Roach said the night was inspiring “because it’s something new and different.”

Laganas reflected on her own collaborative experience.

“I met the composer for my poem, Robert, a few days before tonight, and he was saying, ‘Why not both champagne and maggots?’ So, the fact that he incorporated both positive and negative was great,” she explained. “Then the dancers made it special. I definitely felt it in my heart.”

Pepper said her goal to choreograph a dance was to capture what Upshaw expressed in her words, the imagery of many people watching and focused on two people dancing in front of them.

“It was full of color and so much joy,” she said after the show. “How can I illustrate the same type of color in a way that is so clear and distinctive within the poem? How can I put that in the body and have that same feeling emanate through the room and be felt by the audience?”

“They are really focused on watching the two people, and it's only about them; everyone else is secondary every, and it doesn't really matter what else going on.”

Each year, the Festival of the Creative Arts hosts this combination of music, poetry, and dance every year, with a new theme. Poets featured in the performance are asked to submit their poems in March, giving the musicians and dancers ample time to prepare their interpretations.

Hamby enjoyed seeing how her theme came to life this year, saying, “I love party poems.”

The poets, musicians, and dancers are already preparing to make a splash next year. For the opening of the 2027 festival, audiences will be invited to enter the marine world.

“Next year, it's going to be the ocean,” Hamby said, previewing another performance that should not be missed.

Kaylee Morrow is a senior at Florida State University, majoring in English-Editing, Writing, and Media, with a minor in marketing.

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Dance performances for each reading: Caroline Laganas' poem “Champagne or Maggots?” (top left); Sophia Upshaw's poem “Shania says, Let’s Go, Girls” (middle left; English-LMC major Camille Pepper choreographed this dance); Hugh Wilhelm's poem “Dear Earth (XLIII)" (bottom left); Natalie Eleanor Patterson's poem “I Am the Only Thing Left Behind” (top right); Christell Victoria Roach's poem “One Mic Stand, after Sam Cooke” (bottom right). All photographs on this page by Meagan Helman, adjunct professor in FSU's School of Dance.