MacSlams with Ty Chapman

On Saturday, February 18th, MacSlams hosted its first poetry slam of the spring semester, featuring poet Ty Chapman, in the Weyerhaeuser Chapel. Ty’s performance was rhythmically and sonically compelling and strikingly intimate, exploring themes of ancestry, nation, violence, and Blackness in America through a cadence strong and vital, like a relentless wave crashing at a shoreline.

Ty Chapman’s recent impressive literary accolades include three children’s books, SARAH RISING (Beaming 2022); LOOKING FOR HAPPY (Beaming 2023); A DOOR MADE FOR ME, written with Tyler Merritt (WorthyKids 2022); and a forthcoming poetry collection through Button Poetry. Ty was also finalist for Tin House’s 2022 Fall Residency, Button Poetry’s 2020 Chapbook Contest, and Frontier Magazine’s New Voices Contest. He is currently an MFA candidate in creative writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was recently named a Loft Literary Center Mirrors & Windows fellow and Mentor Series fellow.

Before Ty’s performance, MacSlams leaders Anna Šverclová and Kendall Kieras sat down with him over dinner at Shish. Mainly a page poet, Ty noted that a poetry slam is not his usual venue. He remarked that his creative career didn’t even start in poetry. He began first in speech/debate, and then shifted into a poetry slam program at Central High School. After a brief stint in puppet theater, he shifted back into poetry and children’s literature, and has stuck there ever since. He is loyal to the Twin Cities art scene, and loves to engage in all the various different modes of creative expression and community-building we have here in Minnesota.

This year, MacSlams has been trying to bring in more poets from the Twin Cities to feature in their slams to foster more connection between Macalester and the wider Twin Cities art scene. There’s something electric about living in the same space and environment as the poet that creates a deeper, knowing connection between the audience and the artist, especially in a literary art form as vulnerable and physical as slam poetry. Ty’s poetry felt universal yet grounded in Minneapolis streets, dug up from the Nicollete avenue potholes and reeled in from the shores of the Mississippi river.

You can check out Ty’s work at his website here, his Instagram (@tychapMN), and wherever books are sold!

The Words thanks Ty for taking the time to share his art with Macalester!