Junior Mia Lochhead started the Poetry Club, meeting every Friday in the Algonquin Writing Center (AWC), to spread her love for poetry and provide a supportive environment for students to share their own writing.

In her freshman year, Lochhead started reading poetry and wanted to find people with similar interests. In collaboration with the AWC and its advisers Seth Czarnecki and Sara Stein, she created the Poetry Club, where students can write poetry and share their work during meetings in a low-stakes environment.

“There’s no deadline, no end; we just want to write and share poetry,” Lochhead said. “We want to share the love of poetry.”

The Poetry Club’s weekly meetings are designed to be fun and create an environment where people can write at their best without the typical stresses of grades and class deadlines. While Lochhead is responsible for creating the meeting plans, she relies on members to help her pick fun and exciting activities.

“We usually start with some writing and then informal sharing,” Czarnecki said.

Although the club specifically focuses on poetry, they have the broad desire for people to enjoy writing.

“We want people to write for the sake of writing rather than just for improving academic papers.” Czarnecki said.

Although a Poetry Club has existed in some form at Algonquin for nearly 10 years, according to Czarnecki, it tends to fall out of favor when the students who drive it graduate. Creating a more permanent club is important to both Czarnecki and Lochhead.

“Something that remains consistent, more long-term,” Lochhead said.

Other future goals include increasing the Poetry Club’s outreach and finding ways for club members to share their work to a larger audience.

“In the future we would like to think about publishing work and holding poetry events,” Czarnecki said.