{"id":9327,"date":"2024-11-06T22:00:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T22:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=9327"},"modified":"2024-11-06T22:00:48","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T22:00:48","slug":"neil-hilborn-features-at-macslams-event","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-october-2024\/neil-hilborn-features-at-macslams-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Hilborn Features at MacSlams Event"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Birdie Keller ’25<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the night of Saturday, October 26th, a crowd of poetry lovers gathered in the Weyerhaeuser Chapel for a poetry slam hosted by MacSlams and featuring Macalester alumnus Neil Hilborn (\u201911). It was an evening of laughter, snaps, and Halloween costumes\u2014even including a costume competition!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poet Ollie Schminkey (\u201916) hosted the slam, bringing humor and energy to the evening. Their banter back and forth with Neil\u2014often about Neil\u2019s significant fame as a slam poet or Ollie and Neil\u2019s friendship\u2014inspired many laughs from the audience and helped set the tone of the slam as a chill and fun event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In keeping with traditional MacSlams structure, the night kicked off with an open mic. Poets who had signed up for the open mic bravely performed pieces, not at all deterred by needing to fiddle with the microphone to get it to just the right height. One poet, Beja Pu\u0161k\u00e1\u0161ov\u00e1 (\u201926) announced that it was her first ever public poetry reading, received by resounding applause from audience members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the open mic, the competitive portion of the slam began. Judges were selected at random from the audience, and Tanesha Nicole Tyler from Button Poetry performed a fantastic piece about their relationship with their name, as the sacrificial \u201csac\u201d poet. Sacrificial poets allow judges to calibrate their scoring before the slam begins in earnest. Poets competed in the first round of the slam, followed by a costume contest featuring a variety of delightful homemade costumes (including Buzz and Woody, a dinosaur, a pirate, and more!). Then, before round two of the slam began, Neil Hilborn performed a set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MacSlams often brings amazing feature poets to Macalester as part of their monthly slams, and there are few poets who could be more suited to return than Neil Hilborn. A Macalester alumnus, Hilborn was one of the founding members of MacSlams, along with Dylan Garity (\u201912). MacSlams regularly sends a team on to competitions, and in 2011, Neil and Dylan were part of the team placing first at the College National Poetry Slam. In 2013, Neil and Dylan\u2019s poems \u201cOCD<\/a>\u201d <\/em>and \u201cFriendzone<\/a>\u201d <\/em>respectively went viral on the internet. Since graduating from Macalester, Neil has continued to perform slam poetry, run writing workshops, and has published multiple poetry books, including his most recent collection, About Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A powerful performer and delightful stage presence, Neil held the audience\u2019s attention as he drew us through an emotional arc, performing \u201cOCD\u201d, \u201cThe Future,\u201d a cover of an Ada Lim\u00f3n poem, and a variety of new poems from About Time: <\/em>\u201cInside of Every Turducken is a Turd,\u201d \u201cRasp,\u201d \u201cWater is Distantly Related to All Other Water\u201d and \u201c(I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neil also sprinkled touches of personality and care throughout his set. At one point, after performing \u201cRasp,\u201d a piece where he reflects on his mother\u2019s decision to not vaccinate him as a child, Neil brought out a vase of flowers and invited audience members to take a flower after the slam, as a reminder that decisions made for us by others can have an impact on our lives, but will eventually wither away. I was incredibly touched by this gesture. He also said that someone should please feel free to take the vase as well; he didn\u2019t want to travel with it! Along with posters and poetry collections available for purchase after the slam were notebooks that Neil had hand-personalized with writing prompts and inspirational statements. He also personalized his banter to Macalester, joking about all the places on campus he cried when he was a student here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This careful balance of humor and seriousness is a striking aspect of Neil\u2019s performance. When talking to me later about his approach to emotions in performance, Neil said, \u201cYou need tonal variation. You need peaks and valleys\u2026 If you hit one note for an entire set, [audiences] are just not going to be with you. When I\u2019m building any set, I try to build in an emotional arc.\u201d He added, \u201cThat\u2019s the way I\u2019ve always coped with darkness and sadness, is by making jokes about it. If I can laugh about something, then it hurts a little less when I\u2019m done laughing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veronica Kruschel (\u201925) and Adrien Wright (\u201925), leaders of MacSlams who have performed together on the competitive team that MacSlams has put together in previous years, discussed the planning for this event. Veronica explained how great it was that Neil was able to lead a workshop earlier that day to compliment the slam. The first poem Veronica performed in the competitive slam\u2014about making soup, among other things\u2014was written in the workshop earlier that day! Both Veronica and Adrien emphasized the community that MacSlams and the larger slam community in the Twin Cities has brought them. Veronica said, \u201cThe team goes to the Midwest Poetry Mashup\u2026 and you realize how many people in Minnesota and the Midwest are really passionate about slam poetry.\u201d Adrien agreed, pointing out, \u201cA lot of people\u2019s first experience with slam poetry was the Button Poetry page, including Neil Hilborn\u2019s \u2018OCD,\u2019 and so having these slams and meeting people in the community is a great way to see what\u2019s going on right now in slam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The importance of literary community clearly cannot be understated. When asked what advice he has for current Mac students getting involved or trying to stay involved in the slam community here, Neil said, \u201cIt sounds simple, and maybe a little stupid, but if you want to be in the community, you\u2019ve got to go to the events. If there\u2019s a Loft show, go to the reading at The Loft. Go to BuckSlam, come to Macalester slams after you\u2019ve graduated […] And that\u2019s part of it, if you just show up and you have a face at an event. Half of the people that I\u2019ve continued to work with are just folks I\u2019ve been around for a while. So that\u2019s part of it. Just get out of your house sometimes and go to readings.\u201d Neil\u2019s latest collection, About Time<\/em>, is out now. If you were at the slam and want to revisit the pieces he read, or if you want to see what the hype is all about, make sure to order the collection at Button Poetry here.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Birdie Keller ’25 On the night of Saturday, October 26th, a crowd of poetry lovers gathered in the Weyerhaeuser Chapel for a poetry slam hosted by MacSlams and featuring Macalester alumnus Neil Hilborn (\u201911). It was an evening of laughter, snaps, and Halloween costumes\u2014even including a costume competition! Poet Ollie Schminkey (\u201916) hosted the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":9323,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9327","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9327"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9343,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9327\/revisions\/9343"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}