Love Jones Featured Artist: First-Year Slam Poet Riley O’Connell
Perla LunaTHE SANTA CLARAOctober 29, 2015
[dropcap]D[/dropcap]uring her senior year of high school, Santa Clara first-year Riley O’Connell wrote a 15-minute slam poem that earned her a spot among five finalists vying to be 2015’s Denver Youth Poet Laureate. It was her first official poetry performance.
“I’ve always written, I’ve always been a writer since I was probably seven or eight,” O’Connell said. “I’ve just liked writing stories and I’ve gotten involved writing books and stuff like that. Poetry wise, I didn’t really get involved until first semester of my senior year.”
The title’s rewards were tempting and rare for an 18-year-old writer. Riley would have received a book deal, a $2,500 scholarship and the chance to tour Colorado as a performer and advocate of the arts. But ultimately, Riley made the decision to turn down the title in order to attend college at Santa Clara.
“I was considering going to (University of Colorado) Boulder so that I could stay in Colorado,” O’Connell said. “But then I realized that my opportunities would probably outweigh staying in Colorado for a year when I didn’t want to. I wanted to go somewhere where I would be pushed out of my comfort zone. If I had taken the Denver Laureate position and gone to UC Boulder, I would have known everyone at that school.”
Despite turning down the tempting perks, Riley still wants to work on her writing with an eye on producing realistic young adult fiction when she’s older. But her love of poetry remained. When she stumbled upon the application for Igwebuike’s fall quarter Loves Jones, she applied on the first possible day to showcase her poetry.
At the show, Riley performed an original slam poem called “Dante’s 9 Circles of Anxiety.” Since it was only her fourth time performing her poetry, Riley was understandably nervous. She had to follow other strong poets and express her most personal struggles in front of a large crowd of strangers.
“I’m super open about a lot of things,” Riley said. “I write about very personal things but I had never even spoken about my anxiety and panic attacks because I feel like it’s kind of a taboo thing people don’t really talk about. I was definitely nervous but once I got going, I felt like I was in my element.”
Contact Perla Luna at pluna@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.