James Madison University.
288 miles.
That’s how far Katherine Dolan, a ’14 alumna, is traveling to emcee JMU’s Word is Born Writers’ Society’s third annual Love Me, Love Me Not poetry jam. But to her, the four-and-a-half-hour drive from her home in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, is worth it. She created the event back when she was a junior at JMU.
“It’s for family,” Dolan said. “That’s why I’m coming back. Word is Born is my family. I couldn’t let them down.”
Word is Born has grown since Dolan first joined as a sophomore in 2011. The club has tripled in size and now nearly 20 poets are scheduled to perform at the poetry jam on Thursday.
“It’s like having a child and then your child grows up to be a rock star,” Dolan said. “I just think that it’s catching on because of the people in the club. It almost speaks to the level of competence of our performance poetry and shows that our members do … it’s just becoming a really contagious and fun thing to do.”
The club itself provides a creative outlet for its members to express their feelings through writing. Wednesday meetings are referred to as “workshops” by the co-presidents. Every week, the goal is to develop the voices of new and returning writers through open mic nights, poetry jams, community service and creative writing workshops. According to Oslin, the passionate members translate their lives into the best form possible and help others do the same. The whole point of this long process is to get their stories out to the public.
“When we go onstage, that’s our brand: we turn their stories into performances onstage,” Oslin said.
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