On a dimly lit stage Thursday night in Brody Hall, she raised and lowered her voice as she recited rapid stanzas of a poem called “Lost,” captivating the 20-some audience members.

Chastine, a member of MSU’s Black Poets Society, said it was the first poem she wrote after she got out of her funk.

“I was just feeling like when I wasn’t able to write, I lost myself in the process,” the food science sophomore said.

Chastine is one of many past and present MSU students who have used the Black Poets Society, or BPS, as an outlet for feelings, thoughts and art in the organization’s past 10 years.

Beginning the society

In March of 1998, Eleazar Barzart and a couple of friends — all of them students at the time — formed the Black Poets Society to “get people interested in poetry and to have an outlet for people to do things,” Barzart said.

The group began with a monthly poetry reading called “Soul Night,” which the 2004 graduate said featured a comedic host, a DJ and poetry readings by members of the group.

Tiya Kunaiyi, who joined BPS around 2000, said the core members at the time were like a family.

“Black Poets Society wasn’t just an extracurricular thing — it was who we were,” the 2003 graduate said. “We did everything with each other. We found ourselves in this group, we found our voices and we began to figure out who we were as writers.”

At the time, a lot of people were interested in the art of poetry, but there wasn’t an outlet for it because people were too shy, Kunaiyi said.

“At that point, the spoken word thing was just beginning to peek its eye out,” she said. “Everybody was kind of interested, but nobody knew where to go.”

Part of what put BPS on the map was a 2002 event called “Bum Rush the Stage,” which Barzart said featured poets from MTV’s “Road Rules” and HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam” and also had skits performed by BPS members.

To celebrate the group’s 10th anniversary, current BPS president Domonique Baul said it’s planning “Bum Rush the Stage: 10 Acts for 10 Years,” which will feature past and present members. Exact details are still in the works, but the date is scheduled for March 22, the telecommunication, information studies and media junior said.

“(The 2002 event) was really big and it was really nice,” Barzart said. “We were looking to try to simulate that.”

In the past decade, BPS has gone from monthly performances to weekly meetings. Baul said the group meets every Sunday and performs at on- and off-campus events throughout the school year.

She said the Sunday meetings are used to take care of group business and to hold poetry workshops on writing skills such as extended metaphors and imagery.

“We recently did a haiku workshop because it’s often said in the poetry community that if you want to become a better writer, start with writing haikus because you have to fit so much of a thought into 17 syllables,” Baul said. “That’ll just teach you how to be more critical of your writing.”

Performances are made up of members’ original work — all written and performed in different styles — with a mission to “promote artistic expression without censors,” Baul said.

She said common misconceptions are that the group is only for poets and for black people.

“It’s really just about anybody who has an appreciation for poetry,” she said.

Ideas become art

Jim Smith Jr., a 2006 MSU graduate, said he found his love and talent for writing poetry when he was in third grade.

“I used to draw a lot when I was younger and all of a sudden poetry just came out,” Smith said. “I don’t know how it happened.”

He said he gave his poems to his teachers, who liked them. He started keeping track of what he wrote a few years later.

Smith got involved with BPS in 2004 after attending open-mic nights and participating in a campus poetry competition. Although he graduated, he lives in the Lansing area and is a member of the group.

Smith said he classifies much of his writing as “American contemporary.”

“It’s blank verse,” he said. “Basically, you write it and it doesn’t have a certain length or any meters or rhyme scheme.”

While Smith said inspiration for most of his poems comes from observation, other poets, such as Chastine, draw mostly from personal experiences.

“(When I started writing poetry), I had a lot of stress and feelings bottled in, so I just wrote it down on paper,” Chastine said. “It allowed me to release my anger, my feelings. It helped me express myself better because I really wasn’t a verbal person.”

Barzart agreed that some people can speak better through writing.

“They might not be able to say it straight out but they can kind of say it in a beating-around-the-bush way,” Barzart said.

From paper to the stage

Once the poetry is on paper, the next step is the performance, which is an art in itself.

But for Baul, nerves can sometimes make for her best performances.

“It’s like that nervous energy, you just have to know how to control it and channel it to the audience,” she said.

Similarly, Kris Amos, a psychology freshman and member of BPS, said he gets his energy from the crowd.

“It felt good (when I started reading my poetry) because you see people on TV and you see the audience giving them so much love. That’s kinda how it is — no matter how you do, the people in the audience are always gonna show you love.”

Kunaiyi said she usually isn’t a nervous speaker — but when it comes to her art, it can be a different story.

“If you’re writing and you’re putting yourself into it, you’re vulnerable to an audience who can yea or nay to how you feel,” she said.

For some poets, it’s a lot harder to get up and speak in front of people, but Baul said that’s where BPS can help.

“There have been people that were nervous to read their poetry out loud, but we just welcome them in and tell them that you don’t have to be a slam poet to be a part of BPS,” Baul said. “You don’t have to be anything except for a person that appreciates art.”

Chastine, who had never performed before joining BPS, said she has to “dig deep” to deliver her poetry on stage, as if she’s saying it to herself.

“It’s not like I’m doing it for the audience,” she said. “I’m doing it for me.”

She joined the group last semester and said she was nervous before reading aloud for the first time, but the other members gave her tips on how to improve her performance.

Smith said he thinks he has a good speaking voice, but would rather focus on the content of his poems when reading them aloud.

“If you saw (my writing) in a book, you may be more intrigued as opposed to me reciting it,” he said. “I believe I have a good voice, but at the same time, I don’t think it would be as good as matched up in the book. I have to get better at the performance.”

But Amos said no matter how his poems are spoken, it’s most important for the audience to understand what is being said.

“(Some poets) base their poems on the performance, and I base mine on the lyrics,” he said. “I try to make sure I get the lyrics across.”

Ultimately, Amos said he wants to change a person’s life or help someone through one of his poems.

“Words are powerful,” he said. “You can do a lot with words if you know how to use them.”