Students host event to express ‘Fatal Attraction’ through spoken word

The new spoken word organization “Poetree” will host its first event “Fatal Attraction” on Friday, Feb. 13, at 8 p.m. in the Kent State Student Center room 206.

The organization is an “outlet for whatever you’re feeling,” said Iniah Dunbar, historian of Poetree and freshman athletic training major.

The group wanted this spoken word performance to be about love poems due to being so close to Valentine’s Day, but then they came up with an original spin on the idea.

“At first, we were thinking about the movie ‘Fatal Attraction,’” Dunbar said. “And then we were thinking everybody would do poems about crazy exes or stalkers.”  

Dunbar said that because Friday the 13th is supposed to be a superstitious day and Valentine’s Day comes right after, Poetree decided to do something with both.

So, the group created an event about poetry about relationships that have gone wrong to be performed on the day before Valentine’s Day.

There will be 10 spoken word performances ranging through the whole wide spectrum of mismatched and crazy relationships.

She said the poems will focus on relationships that went wrong: liars, cheaters, stalkers and people who were attracted to people who didn’t know they were attracted to them.

“We have people who have been doing poetry for a long time, and we have people who just write, and now this is the first time they’re actually getting to perform it,” Dunbar said.

Dunbar said Poetree would never deter any couples from going, but there won’t be romantic love poems if that are what people are expecting the day before Valentine’s Day.

“It’s definitely not going to be like the really Valentine’s Day vibe,” she said. “It’s going to be the opposite.”

Dunbar said she hopes the issues that “Fatal Attraction” brings up will be relatable and interesting.

“People are going to be like ‘yeah that’s happened to me before’ or ‘no, that’s never happened to me before. That’s crazy, but it’s interesting,’” Dunbar said.

There will also be an open-mic portion after the performance for anyone who would like to share their own disastrous romances. This event is free to the public.

Contact Dara Sander at [email protected].