C.R. Grimmer’s Poetry Class Engaged in a Community Fundraiser

English Department poetry students collaborated with Cache Valley Mutual Aid (CVMA) to host a fundraiser in February to raise money for the nonprofit organization. The students read poetry, which was combined with music to create a night of art, community, and service.

Assistant Professor C.R. Grimmer helped coordinate the event with Miles Folsom, staff assistant in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and co-founder of CVMA, and other members of the organization.

“The collaboration started when I was asking about ways to bring local musicians and USU poets together in the community,” C.R. says. “I wanted us to create a space where students could work across arts and literature disciplines to practice performing poetry but also give back to the local community.”

All of the students who read were volunteers, including undergraduate poetry student Indigo Mardis. “I think it’s super important to create and uphold spaces where people come together to support each other and grow collectively,” Indigo reflects. Indigo shared two poems, one about searching for safety and trying to cope under anti-trans policies and laws and the other about working through grief that feels unjustified. They said, “I got my love of poetry through the slam scene, and this chance to be on stage to represent something I really care about meant a lot to me.”

C.R. expressed this on the intersection between mutual aid and poetry: “CVMA is a local nonprofit that supports community members but also works to build a sense of reciprocity in the community. The organizers are also musicians. Poetry is a language art that can often be performed in community. Because it is a language art, it is already part of building our ideas about society and culture, including ways we can give back and support one another.”

In addition to raising funds for CVMA, C.R. viewed the fundraiser as a positive way for students to participate in the community beyond the English Department. “This benefits students who want to experience sharing and performing their poems beyond the classroom, which is how writers create careers post-graduating; it also benefits the community to share and experience expressive arts,” they comment. “Events like this benefit concert and reading strengthen the relationship between in-classroom learning and off-campus practice but also the ways artists and writers use their craft to give back to their communities.”