Slam poet Gina Loring performs at Brookens Auditorium

November 12, 2008
By Armando Vega
Staff Writer  

Photo by David Clary Loring is famous for appearances on HBO’s Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry and BET’s Lyric Cafe.

Last Thursday, slam-poet Gina Loring dropped by Brooken’s Auditorium, laying down forceful lines of inspired verse.

Calling on us to use poetry and writings as a therapeutic tool, Loring evoked sentiments in tight blasts of tense flow.

She reminded the crowd that everybody had a story and that there are poems all around.  They just need microphones and voices willing to speak them.

“Somewhere there is a poem.

I wanna write this poem, I wanna speak this poem, I wanna feel this poem, I wanna experience this poem.

Cradle it in my arms, feed it a good meal, and send it on its merry way.”

Her set pieces seemed at times too politically antagonizing for the moment, given that the nation had just witnessed the successful conclusion of a historic campaign process.

Yet listening to her, one shared her sense of wide-eyed wonder at the innocence of an eighteen-month old niece.  A child for whom every moment is new and who holds “more wisdom up her sleeve then we can conceive,” in her capacity as a fresh new life.

One smirked when she asked if flowers minded when they were picked for her birthday and felt nostalgic for conscious hip-hop as she recited her ode.  One briefly shared in her sense of self-affirmation when she related how she took life as a woman of mixed-race in today’s America.

It would have been a difficult thing to do, to not have come away from Gina Loring’s session with a sincere liking of her as a person.  But it might have been even more difficult to have walked away from her performance without an appreciation of the professionalism she brings to her craft.

I don’t know where Gina Loring’s ranked among those “in-the-know” within the slam-poetry scene, but none I've seen have matched hers, neither as art nor as entertainment.