Jennifer Bartell Boykin's love of poetry stems from her childhood. She said she has always loved to read and write, but she was drawn to poetry as a child when she listened to her grandmother tell stories.
“She told stories a lot. Sometimes, she would tell me the same story over and over again. And at some point, I realized Grandma's telling me all the same story because she wants me to remember it. And writing became my way of remembering,” Boykin said. “I just fell in love with poetry because it allowed me to express myself, and it allowed me to figure out parts of myself I never really explored emotionally."
As the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, Boykin serves as an ambassador to the community, commissioning poems for individuals, events and organizations alike.
“I'm very honored and blessed to have this title. It's a really important one,” Boykin said. “There's a lot that happens with poetry in Columbia, and we have a very active, very vibrant poetry community in the city. So I've been trying to do a lot of things with promoting them more as well.”
In a highlight project of her term, Boykin founded the inaugural Soda City Poetry Festival in hopes of spreading poetry across the city and promoting the art form to young people.
The Soda City Poetry Festival hosted over 200 poets from various backgrounds and experiences who have also published their work in a number of ways, ranging from stage performances to the written word. The event, which took place on Saturday, June 22, at the Richland Library Main, also featured poetic readings, performances, workshops and programming for children and teens, including a teen poetry showcase.
Boykin said the day-long festival was made possible by the Mellon Foundation and the Poet Laureate Fellowship granted by the Academy of American Poets.
“Poetry is not just for this select group of people. Poetry is for everyone. So it was really important to me to make the festival as accessible as possible by offering different options for different ages and different types of poets.” Boykin said. “It's not like an academic festival. It’s for everyone. It was for the common person to come and experience poetry.”
The teen poetry showcase allowed high school students and recent graduates to share their original work with peers. Each poet had their own path to the art form and could share and relate with their peers through the readings.
Participants of the teen poetry showcase at the inaugural Soda City Poetry Festival gather on stage for a group photo on June 22, 2024. Participants shared original works with an audience of their family members, peers, and festival attendees.
Leo Naddell, a senior at Spring Valley High School, said they found poetry through school and that it complemented their other interests at the time.
"My middle school was doing a poetry club, and I really wanted to be in it because I've always really liked writing just in general, and so it was like, it's a new form of writing, I might as well," Naddell said. "So I got into it, and then I really got into it, and then I really, really got into it."
Recent Spring Valley High School graduate A. Hopkins started writing poetry as a pastime, though it quickly became more than that.
"For me personally, I was grounded, and I had nothing else to do, so I just started writing, and it made the time pass," Hopkins said. "It really helped me at the time."
While the participants of the teen poetry showcase may have had different journeys to finding poetry, Naddell said safe spaces for people, especially teens, to express their feelings are becoming increasingly important.
"I think it's very important for children to have a safe place for artistic expression. I feel like we don't get that enough nowadays in school settings where it's mandated to have assignments that have specific requirements instead of just like free-form poetry," Naddell said. "I think that encouraging people to write as they want, whatever they want, and express themselves in whatever way they feel fit is really good for their community."
Hopkins echoed a similar sentiment regarding the importance of having spaces for poetry.
"I think it's very important for younger kids, and especially teens, to have a safe space to be able to express how they feel," Hopkins said. "I know a lot of households don't promote that, which is very unfortunate. And I think it's also very important to have a community, to have people that you can bounce ideas off of, to be able to reform and be inspired and rewrite and to learn."
Boykin said sharing poetry in a communal space encourages connection between readers and writers and their audience of peers.
“When you read a poem, or you hear somebody read a poem, and you recognize a piece of yourself in it, you're able to make that connection. It makes you remember that you're not alone in the world, even though sometimes you may feel that way,” Boykin said. “Sometimes, it may feel like you're the only one who's going through whatever it is you may be going through. But I think one of the big things with poetry is it illuminates and shows us different sides of ourselves and different aspects of our humanity and it enables us to connect with one another.”