Student poets took the stage Friday night to share their innermost feelings before a crowd of about 50 people at Freestyle Fridays: Hip Hop/Poetry Slam.
The event, sponsored by the Institute of Black Culture, Hip Hop Collective and Poets Inc., featured students performing some of their own work for the first time, as well as a headlining New York-based poet known as Kesed.
The event took place at UF's Public Health and Health Professions auditorium.
Kesed Ragin, 22, who traveled from New York to attend the event and a poetry workshop beforehand, said he began writing poetry when he was 16.
Ragin said he never thought he could be paid for a hobby he had in high school.
"It's evolved since then, and it's a beautiful thing," he said.
He said he was first exposed to poetry in fourth grade, when a teacher encouraged his class to use books on Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as poetic inspirations.
Before that, he associated poetry with Shakespeare, but he said his teacher put him in his place when she told him any piece of writing that invoked change was poetry.
"If that isn't poetry, I don't know what is," Ragin said, echoing his teacher's words in an interview before his reading. Among the student performers was Jasper What, a UF history senior. What said his poetry was sparked by a rough childhood.
"It's just my outlet for things that frustrate me," he said. "I can't really just sit down and try to write."
Charles Harriott, president of the Hip Hop Collective, said he was impressed with each student's performance.
Harriott didn't read any poetry, explaining that he mostly expresses himself through dance. But he said any artistic release takes talent and passion.
"They share a lot about themselves," Hariott said of the poets. "It's a way of venting. It's got to be liberating."
