Poets Place 4th in National Competition

Montclair State’s poetry group, Speaking Through Silence, placed among the top four teams nationwide in the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational at the University of Colorado-Boulder last spring.

Speaking Through Silence joined groups from the University of Texas-Austin, Virginia Commonwealth University and Princeton University to round out the final four, with UT-Austin taking home the top prize.

Montclair State was in good company. Among the 52 teams competing were Harvard, Yale, Brown and Stanford universities, as well as the University of California-Los Angeles, UC-Berkeley and Georgetown University.

In its semifinal round, Montclair State defeated Washington University, Berklee College of Music and Carleton College.

Nearly 800 people attended the final bout of the four-day competition. The invitational, which is 14 years old, is the only licensed poetry slam tournament in the United States that brings college students together in poetry competition.