Akhil Katyal read his poems on campus. Many of the poems he read were written about the cities that he has recently been to since he has been traveling reading his poems. His poems were mainly about places and current issues. The first one he read was about the recent election of Donald Trump. He discussed some of his issues and concerns due to the increase in discrimination of other races and of the LGBT community after the election. He had another poem about Bombay and he discussed a train station there. I really enjoyed his poems and liked how current they were and how some of them talked about current issues. It made them easier to understand and relate to because I knew about the issues in which he discussed from hearing about them all recently.

            After Katyal read his poems the audience had the opportunity to ask him questions. I thought it was interesting that he speaks 4 languages. He writes poems in not only English, but in Hindi. He sometimes even translates his poems between languages and can read them to many different audiences. He also talked about how he has noticed that the poems he writes in English tend to be more melancholy while he feels he is more humorous when he writes in Hindi. Overall, it was very interesting to listen to his poems and learn about the author. The poetry meetings are definitely more interesting than I had originally anticipated since I am not usually interested in poetry. I would recommend going to one and trying it out even if you think you would not be very interested in it.

I enjoyed going to this event even though I am not that into poetry. It was better than I had expected it to be. I found him to be pretty funny and since he was from New Jersey I was able to understand some of the references that he made. For example, he had a whole poem about how he had worked at Great Adventure on the Rolling Thunder ride and talked about this girl he met there who he was interested in. I grew up going to Great Adventure and have rode Rolling Thunder, so I liked being able to relate to that a little bit. He also had a few poems about fatherhood, he discussed his own childhood as well as his two daughters.
I also thought it was interesting how he had a poem about slaves. Gregory Pardlo had an interest in slave narratives, so he had read some of them and ended up making it into a poem. I never really thought about taking something that you were interested in reading and turning it into a poem. He also had other different ideas like this, such as his poem that was written as a description of a class which he thought would be interesting to teach. This idea came about from him having to write course descriptions. Overall, I was surprised that actually enjoyed it and it was a nice change to attend an event such as this.

The other day I attended a meeting for the Stockton Theatre Club. Since it was one of their first meetings and there were many new faces, we played a games and afterwards went around introducing ourselves. There were many members who major in a part of theatre, including aspects related to backstage work, but there were also many other majors. The club is great for anyone interested in theatre, on stage or behind the scenes, and it seems like people can get a lot of experience with it at the club, with their many events and workshops.

Some of the upcoming events include Whose Line Is It Anyway? shows, workshops and a performance of monologues. The Whose Line shows are improvisation shows where actors do skits and the audience comes up with the characters or scenario. I have been to a few and they were very funny and entertaining. I definitely recommend going to one. The next one, I believe, is in late October, but there will also be more after that. They also do workshops on different things in theatre run by the seniors and professors, so that people can improve their skills and learn. I know there will be many performances that people can go see as well if they are not interested in the actual acting or behind the scenes work such as the performance of monologues which is coming up soon, plays, musicals and many others.

            I am very excited to be a part of the club this year and am looking forward to being involved in these events. They seem like they will be a lot of fun and I would recommend going to at least some of these events. The theatre club meets on Thursdays at 4:30 pm in the experimental theatre lobby, which is downstairs from the PAC, so come and check out the club!