Azalea VanderElzen stood in front of 40 people in the Craft Theater at the Public School Poetry reading, navigating her stage fright and inner emotions. Public School Poetry, an online poetry and craft journal that values the ideas of learning, breaking rules and supporting engagement with unique perspectives held a reading in the Craft Theater on Sept. 30 2025. They invited poets from their previous issues along with five Community guest poets: senior Autumn Klus-Salisbury, senior Lincoln Fox, senior Cypress Milligan, senior Kaylee Gadepalli and sophomore VanderElzen.
Despite its name, Public School Poetry is not a school or student-specific publication. Due to the value they see in non-hierarchical communities, the leaders chose to call themselves “vice principals.” In Sept., Public School Poetry released their fifth poetry journal. They decided to hold a reading to spread the word about the journal.
Ellen Stone, the advisor of CHS’s poetry club and a “vice principal” of Public School Poetry, began the event by welcoming everyone to eat pizza and drink the lemonade she had brought in. After everyone had come in and begun to eat, Stone got on the mic and asked everyone to sit down to listen to the first poets of the night. Next, everyone listened to Public School Poetry’s poets and their fight song, which was sung by Scott Beal, another “vice principal.”
Klus-Salisbury, who had shared out “Dear Robert,” was the second poet to go up and read. She found that her curiosity surrounding poetry made her want to learn more on how to read out her poetry to people and how to get better at writing it which she did by attending the poetry reading.
“The first year I was writing poetry I was terrified to read it out to others,” Klus-Salisbury said. “But at the end of year I realized my poetry was gonna be bad if I didn’t share it out. So I vowed to myself that at any poetry reading I could go to, I would be there sharing my poems.”
In that process of growth, some poets find it becomes a language of how they talk to the world. VanderElzen commented “At first it was a hobby but it quickly became more than that, it became my way of thinking.”
VanderElzen read “A Letter from a Departing Universe to You,” a poem about how she sees the universe, religion and the world as a whole. “Poems help me process emotions and experiences. They also help me express how I see the world,” VanderElzen said
Milligan finds that sometimes it’s about voicing your work in a community that you wish to grow. Milligan, who had read “Monument” and the student lead at neutral zone for their weekly poetry event commented, “the poetry community here is wonderful. I try to read out and listen when I can to support the community that has supported me.”
Agreeing with Milligan, Gadepalli believes that the connection between poems and the poets is why performing at readings is so important. It allows her to see how others see the world while also sharing out what she sees. “Poetry is all about connection, it’s about equating one thing to another,” Gadepalli who had read out “Teaching,” a poem she had written while doing her math homework, said “I think it’s quite amazing how we can get the same prompt or word and find completely different meanings.”
After Gadepalli had read out her original poem, Public Poetry had four different poets come up to read out to the audience. One of them, Keith Taylor, who is a published poet and translator read out “The Biblical Allotment.”
“Readings are a good way to find an audience for your poems since it’s very hard for new poets to get out there.” Taylor talked about why it’s important to read out at these poetry events “It can also help us see new connections to the natural world that we hadn’t seen before.”
After Taylor, Jeffrey Kass, a two-time winner of the Ann Arbor Grand Slam, read out “A Complete Unknown” and “Student flips off her mom after getting dropped off for school” to the crowd.
“Poetry was originally an oral art, a way of calling people together to tell stories or ask questions about the universe, and I enjoy being part of that tradition.” Kass commented on both why he read his poems and also what you can get from reading poetry “I read the poem about the student flipping off her mom because it’s fresh and raw and because it’s about Charlie Kirk,” Kass said. “It felt appropriate because people have been talking about his murder and I just wanted to add my perspective to the conversation in a timely fashion.”
At the end of the poetry reading, Stone gathered everyone for a photo as well as invited the poets to the Community High Poetry Slam that was happening on that same stage, a month and half after the reading. As attendees drifted out into the September night, the sense remained that poetry, in all its forms, is still a way of calling people together.
