Michael Gaut spent his Saturday morning improving his poetry skills at the South Side Communication Center on South Salina Street.

Gaut, also known as ‘Mic tha Poet,’ said he is extremely invested in the poetry community in Syracuse and currently works as a host for the Underground Poetry Spot at The Warehouse Gallery, located on West Fayette Street. The Underground Poetry Spot is a Syracuse-based poetry performance venue that holds open mic nights twice a month.

‘I try to attend anything and everything that has to do with poetry in Syracuse,’ Gaut said.

On this particular morning, Gaut attended a workshop led by Herm Card, a former middle school English teacher and former board member of the Syracuse Poster Project.

The workshop was held from 10 a.m. until noon March 3 and was open to members of the public interested in entering their poetry for the Syracuse Poster Project’s haiku competition.

Gaut was one of five attendees at the haiku workshop. Each of the five attendees had previous experience in poetry writing as participants in the Underground Poetry Spot organization.

The workshop consisted of poetry exercises that emphasized the importance of imagery in haiku poetry and a period of freestyle haiku writing, which the workshop participants then shared with the group at the end of the session.

‘I think the workshop went really well,’ Gaut said. ‘I really enjoyed the emphasis on writing and the opportunity to spread out and write your own poetry.’

The Syracuse Poster Project organization holds the poetry competition annually and haiku poems are then selected from the submissions from the community, said Card. The organization invites poets to write haiku poetry about the city, preferably focusing on the downtown area of Syracuse.

Gaut said he found the information about the Syracuse Poster Project especially interesting and plans on submitting his poetry for the competition.

‘For some reason, the contest never came up on my radar, and I’ve been active in poetry in the community for the last three or four years,’ Gaut said. ‘I’m definitely planning on submitting my work this year.’

Students from Syracuse University professor Roger DeMuth’s illustration class then select a handful of poems for the competition and create illustrations to demonstrate the poem’s theme, Card said.

After reviewing the class’ work, 16 illustrations that best combine the image and the poem are chosen. The illustrations are displayed in approximately 25 kiosks on Salina and Warren streets, Card said.

Card said the competition is a way to bring the art community in Syracuse together.

‘It’s more about the collaboration than the competition,’ Card said. ‘I always say poetry shouldn’t be written or judged to be successful based on a competition. It’s about the celebration of art, and I don’t think we are really judging any of the submissions to be more successful than others. We always get a lot of great work.’

This year, The Stand community newspaper is collaborating with the Syracuse Poster Project to promote community involvement, said Candace Dunkley, a reporter for The Stand and graduate student in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

‘We want to encourage the community to get involved, and I think the haiku workshop was a good way to do that. It went really well,’ Dunkley said. ‘It’s a good way to get people to not be afraid to write.’

adhitzle@syr.edu 

Published on March 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Alexandra: adhitzle@syr.edu | @LexieHitzler