Isa Cruz

While this year’s annual poetry concert marked the end of an era in some ways, Weatherspoon ’25 and the eight other student artists who performed in Studzinski Hall on Saturday night emphasized that they—and the community of Bowdoin poets they’ve formed over the last few years—have a lot more growing to look forward to.

This year’s edition of the Weatherspoon x The Bowdoin Review Annual Poetry Concert was titled “Growing Up”: a theme that reflects both the content of the poems being performed and the fact that this was the final concert at Bowdoin for Weatherspoon, who inaugurated the event as a first year, and Noah Saperstein ’25, one of the editors-in-chief of the Bowdoin Review who has helped organize the last three concerts.

“Noah Saperstein and I wanted to articulate the awkwardness, the beauty and the pain of growing up. I performed a lot of pieces that I’d written years ago, and as I keep performing them, I am inevitably growing with them, through performance, they remain relevant,” Weatherspoon wrote in an email to the Orient.

In 2021, Weatherspoon put together their first concert, and in 2022, they collaborated with Saperstein to organize “Say What’s Real!” Last year, their event was titled “Constants: A Poetry Concert,” after Weatherspoon’s late mother, Constance.

Saturday’s performance began with opening words from Saperstein, who spoke both about his friendship with Weatherspoon and the importance of the event’s theme. In an interview with the Orient, Saperstein mentioned that “Growing Up” was the concert of which he was most proud.

“We were really, really happy with this one. Everyone hit their time perfectly, everyone shared some of their best poems I’ve ever heard,” Saperstein said. “They really rose to the occasion. It was super moving.”

Kaitlin Weiss ’25, who has performed in each of the four concerts Weatherspoon has organized and emceed this year’s event, spoke to how important poetry—and the chance to perform it at Bowdoin—has been to her college experience.

“Certainly one of the most exciting parts of my four years at Bowdoin has been getting to speak at each of the poetry concerts,… and it’s all because Weatherspoon and Noah have worked together to create these spaces,” Weiss said. “Every year, I have left feeling completely full and so overwhelmed by how much talent there is at this school and also how beautiful it is that poets and musicians get up there and are that vulnerable.”

One notable change this year was that “Growing Up” featured a larger number of musical performances than previous concerts. Frances Hornbostel ’25 performed her original song “Rattlesnake Lake,” and Selima Terras ’26 played the cello and sang in several pieces. She also joined Weiss for a piece that alternated between spoken word and cello music.

For Terras, the combination of music and poetry in Saturday’s performance illustrated their similarity, and the overall interconnectedness of different forms of art.

“[They’re] just like two sides of the same coin. When you hear Weatherspoon recite their poems, there’s a beat, there’s a melody—if we defined music differently, that would be considered as music…. There’s no need to create categories,” Terras said. “I believe so much in the power of songs to record histories and connect to people … when they speak to your audience specifically and there’s that interaction.”

Max Grad ’28, an audience member, reflected on how the theme of the performances especially  resonated with him as an underclassman.

“I experienced a level of maturity that I’ve never experienced before.… It’s inspiring to know that there’s so much out there that I can become and that I can harness that—if I see it, if hear it and then if I embody it,” Grad said.

Paul Boardman Jr. ’25, who also attended the concert, highlighted the connection between the performers and the audience.

“I liked when the crowd started to get involved—that was a good time,” Boardman said. “It was great seeing how much support there was in the group [of poets].”

Many of those involved in the performance spoke to how much work Weatherspoon has done to build a community of poets, and especially as Weatherspoon, Saperstein, Weiss and others will graduate this spring, several of the performers emphasized the need to bring new artists into the fold.

“I am one of the many lucky people who got scooped up by [Weatherspoon]…. I read them a poem, and they said ‘You are a writer, you are a poet and you can do this in college,’” Weiss said. “I really, really urge any underclassmen who were in the audience to take it upon themselves to keep this going, because it is such an important creative outlet.”

Weatherspoon echoed this call.

“To Bowdoin’s future poets: Talk your shit!”