Regie Gibson
By : Mia Vitale
Each semester the Salem State Writers’ Series brings in a variety of different writers that come to read and perform. For the 2017 spring semester author, poet, and educator Regie Gibon opened this semester’s series. Gibson has performed in seven different countries and has worked with a collection of different artists ranging from writers to pop artists.
Greeting the full ECC Underground room as his fellow “Word Nerds” he began the evening allowing his audience to question “Why we do this?” and “What pushes us?” having the listeners understand what makes this such a significant way for us to collect together in forums such as this. Gibson allowed us to understand what separates us from the other creatures that we share this world with, in that we are able to survive based on more than our opposable thumbs and instead the languages that make up our world are what guide us in the right direction. Our languages help us to communicate and the poetry that is created through these languages seems to be what Gibson sees as our motivation.
What seemed to make the performance of Gibson’s poetry so special and made the collective audience fell more collective was the fact that he used our voices and our words in certain aspects of his poetry to make it come to life.
He made sure the entire audience realized that we together are something that is collective, as artists with different voices we are all consistent with one goal, we are never finished asking questions, the poets of the world never seem to have an ending point and while to some it seems that we may be done instead we are just beginning. The performance lasted about an hour, but seemed to fly.
If you missed this performance he has partnered up with the Boston Public Library and their Shakespeare Unauthorized program to perform different types of Shakespearean poetry in a Shakespeare meets spoken word event along with some classic Elizabethan dress. Gibson made it known that this is an event that is not to be missed and from his show this last Wednesday any event with Regie Gibson is not one to pass up.