Leah Kindler
Leah Kindler is a senior at Emerson College in Boston, getting a BFA in Creative Writing with a minor in Global and Postcolonial Studies. She is writing an Honors Thesis on the radical imagination and Black feminist writers. Leah is the president of the Emerson Poetry Project, an open mic organization. She also has five blackout poems in an upcoming anthology celebrating the postcolonial scholar Frantz Fanon.
The impact of poetry and the spoken word club
When I joined Spoken Word as a freshman, poetry was something I indulged in late at night when everyone in my house was asleep. The day I went to my first meeting, I hid in the bathroom for ten minutes before I gathered the confidence to walk into the room. By the end of high school, being a poet had become my proudest identifier. I started to see a future in which I could pursue writing as a career, something I had convinced myself was unrealistic. Being in Spoken Word bestowed a sense of importance on me and writing poetry allowed me to articulate myself better. It helped me translate my overactive brain and imagination into words. What was particularly impactful was how seriously Peter Kahn and Adam Levin engaged with my writing. They taught me to learn from other poets and hone my eye for the world around me. I entered my first college poetry workshop with a better ear and a tougher skin than many of my older classmates. The other gift Spoken Word gave me was my best friend and soon-to-be roommate, Maggie Farren. We used to ditch the writing lab together and walk laps around the school talking about our crushes. We still do that now, except the school is the city of Boston. On the day of my last showcase, I said that all the good things in my life came from Spoken Word. I can’t claim that anymore, since it’s been years, but I know the way I move in the world is greatly influenced by the people I met and the poems I read there. And, most importantly, Spoken Word taught me that name-dropping PK is a tried and true technique to get other poets to like you.
Top favorite poets or lyricists
Ada Limón, Ocean Vuong, and June Jordan
Noname, Dessa, and Lucy Dacus
connect with leah teach this poem
Writing Prompts
Create a poem that explains why you do something that’s important to you (write poetry, play basketball, watch anime, etc.)
Create a poem made up of seemingly random details about yourself that ends up teaching us a bunch about who you are
Create a poem with a refrain that gets repeated in each line (“Because” for Leah)