Barack Obama is “nerdy,” Sasha and Malia are “incredibly well-behaved” and Michelle has “so much swag,” according to College senior Joshua Bennett.
Bennett, who balances life as a Penn student with a career as a professional performing poet and a published author, spoke yesterday in Irvine Auditroium about his work and experiences performing at various occasions and locations — most notably, the White House.
The event, which was hosted by the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority — the country’s first historically black sorority — was organized for attendees to learn about entrepreneurship, according to College senior Sonie Guseh, the president of the sorority’s Philadelphia chapter, Gamma Epsilon. She added that another of the event’s goals was to focus on recognizing “outstanding black males in our community and promoting them.”
“For [Bennett] to be an author at this age is incredible,” she said. “We wanted to give him a chance to promote his work.”
Bennett fielded questions from the audience about the inspiration behind his poems, dealing with fame, and the process of getting his book published. He also performed three poems upon audience requests.
Bennett told the audience that he became inspired to write poetry at age 17, when a girl he had a crush on invited him to hang out at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.
“I showed up thinking it was going to be her and about two of her homies, but it was actually a Hurricane Katrina relief benefit with hundreds of people,” Bennett said.
But even though he didn’t get to hang out with his crush alone, that night marked the first time Bennett had ever heard spoken-word poetry performed.
“I went home, and in my yellow Mead spiral notebook, I wrote my first poem,” he said. “It was about being black in a private school. I didn’t know if I thought I had a gift, I just thought I had one hot poem.”
He described his book, “Jesus Riding Shotgun,” which was published in early November, as an anthology of his life. Some poems in the book were written in his early poetry-writing days, while others he wrote merely two months ago.
The book came into being in August, when Mahogany Browne, a poet and publisher, approached Bennett after seeing him perform at Manhattan’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
“I already had the manuscript, and after editing it really rigorously we were able to pump it out,” Bennett said.
La Salle sophomore Tiara Brown, who attended the event, said she “appreciated the fact that he was honest and relatable.”
