by ian martin

imartin@statenews.com

Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath and Tupac were just a few of the dead poets resurrected at Dublin Square on Tuesday night. Not literally of course, but through the Dead Poets’ Contest, which was hosted by the Old Town Poetry Series and the MSU Center for Poetry.

Contestants dressed up as dead poets they admire and brought that poets’ work back to life by reading off up to 5 minutes of their poetry.

Arts and Humanities senior Andrew Smith read off Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem ‘der totentanzin’ in German and then read it a 2nd time in English. ‘Der Totentanzin’ is the English translation for ‘Dance of Death.’

“Essentially, the heavy realization that death comes for everyone,” Smith said about the theme of the poem.

Smith said he has done a couple of poetry events through MSU over the past couple years.

Participants in the contest ranged from high school students to college students to adults. Old Town Poetry Series coordinator Ruelaine Stokes said it was exciting to see how many students were there.

Stokes started the Dead Poets’ Contest in the early ‘90s, but this is the first time the event was held at Dublin Square.

“We thought it’d be good because transportation isn’t easy and we thought if we chose a place that was close to campus we might be able to get both college students and also high school students,” Stokes said.

While there were more community participants than actual students, Director of the MSU Center for Poetry Anita Skeen said one of the things they try to do with the event, is to bring students and the community together.

“Sometimes we tend to get more community people when the events are off campus and we tend to get more students when they’re on campus. But we’re working to try to get a better balance so that the students will come out into town and people from town will come into campus, despite the parking problems,” Skeen said.