On October 22, 2025, the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts (LSWA) hosted “Poetry Night in Ann Arbor” at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, bringing together a crowd of about 300 people for over two hours to celebrate poetry on campus and in the community. The event featured a roster of 24 performers including student poets from LSWA, the U-M English Department’s undergraduate creative writing program, and Ann Arbor Public Schools, as well as 3 nationally renowned headliners: Tommye Blount, Marty McConnell, and Marcus Wicker.
From 1999 to 2019, “Poetry Night in Ann Arbor” was a celebrated annual tradition on campus organized and hosted by Pioneer High School English teacher Jeff Kass. Jeff would bring big-name poets to town to perform alongside a full slate of youth poets in an event that would sometimes stretch for well over three hours. We wanted to recreate the energy and excitement of those events with a few of our own wrinkles while keeping the run-time to a more manageable length. One of those wrinkles was a poet-intermission haiku battle featuring volunteers from the audience. The winner of the haiku battle, chosen by audience applause, turned out to be the younger sibling of one of the high school performers.
The LSWA staff did an enormous amount of work to arrange the event – soliciting poets, arranging theater technical support with Major Events, managing travel and accommodations, doing promotions and outreach, etc. In addition, we held an audition featuring 14 LSWA student poets hoping to claim one of our six performing slots, resulting in another exciting poetry event in the LSWA community. We also held a poetry practice and feedback session for U-M student poets featured in the event and a rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance which helped us make sure that everything ran smoothly. In the end, all the poets performed incredibly and we kept the pace moving quickly, resulting in a successful event from which we hope everyone left feeling entertained and inspired.
Photos by Holly Burkhart and Hannah Mills
