Internationally recognized spoken word artist and activist Alix Olson addressed a crowd of students from Brown and neighboring colleges about "isms," identity politics and women's and queer empowerment in List Art Center Thursday night.
Olson's performance included several of her more well-known works, as well as recent writing she was sharing for the first time. Folk singer and jazz musician Pamela Means added another layer to several poems with guitar and vocal accompaniment.
"You don't seem good. You seem subdued. Why are you all subdued?" she asked an audience of about 70 students, who overwhelmingly responded that finals were dragging them down. "I understand," she reassured them.
Along with the poems she performed, Olson offered the audience humorous anecdotes and stories of troubling encounters and life lessons from her time on tour. She began with a story about the 2002 FalaDuru Festival in Porto, Portugal, where she and other poets from around the world — few of them female or queer, she said — gathered to represent their countries' contributions. Olson said she added shock value to the festival with a poem incorporating language that forced the American Sign Language interpreter to make obscene gestures while she was delivering it.
But the real shock, she said, came afterward at a bar when several poets approached her to inform her that what she had presented wasn't poetry, and that she instead "should consider performing a play or entering politics." More of Olson's male colleagues joined the discussion, arriving at the consensus that their countries "don't have sexism," and therefore her political statements had gone over their heads.
The inspiration for the first poem Olson delivered, "Subtle Sister," came from a comment by one of the aforementioned poets, who said her poetry was "too angry" and needed to be more subtle. "Subtle Sister" is a measured but determined rebuttal to this traditional view of poetry, made on the grounds that the injustices Olson addresses in her poems are anything but subtle.
"I'm pretty clear about my belief system and my values and the kind of politics that I support," she told The Herald Wednesday. Still, Olson said her primary goal is not to persuade others to agree with her, but rather "to represent the idea that there's an alternative way to think."
Aida Manduley '11, head chair of the Brown Queer Alliance and organizer of the event, said she discovered Olson at a poetry festival in Washington, D.C., and has been in touch with her since April. Her visit to campus originally was planned for National Coming Out Week in October but had to be postponed because Olson was sick on the day she was scheduled to appear.
Manduley said she hopes those who attended gained a sense of "empowerment in terms of coming out and asserting one's identity, and being comfortable with that."
During "Unsteady Things," a poem about relationships, several students got on stage and danced to Means' music.
"You're so hot, Brown!" Olson told them.
The show also included pieces of a more somber nature, such as "Independence Meal," a critique of American pride and of the exclusion of marginalized groups implicit within the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. Olson also performed "That the Protagonist is Always Male," a litany of observations exposing sexism in language.
"I've always been interested in the politics of language and linguistics," Olson told The Herald. "Spoken word to me is a medium that directly and indirectly combats that sort of hegemonic structure."
"I never knew being an activist could be so fun," she added.
Olson first infiltrated the spoken word scene while performing at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe in New York City in 1998, after graduating from Wesleyan University. She was touring full time until last year, when she began pursuing a doctorate in political theory at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Audience members said they were familiar with Olson's work prior to her performance.
"I've listened to a lot of her stuff. I just really enjoy it," said Sandra Mastrangelo '12.
"I've been looking forward to this all semester," said Ashley Hartt GS, adding, "I wish that there were more men in the audience and just more students in general."
"I liked that she commented on a lot of international women's issues," said Anila Rehman GS. "She seems to be addressing women's issues globally."
"She had really great rapport with the audience," said Haley Kossek '13.
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