Yonkers Museum Curator To Slam With Nation's Best

YONKERS, N.Y. – A Yonkers museum curator is heading south to verbally spar with some of the world’s best poets.

Laura Vookles, a longtime curator at the Hudson River Museum, is one of five Westchester County residents who will represent the region in the annual Poetry Slam next month in Charlotte, N.C.

There, dozens of poets will present their best works in a team competition of lyrical wit and storytelling, each vying for the crown as the world’s best group of composers.

But this isn’t your run of the mill poetry reading. Each team fields a coach who strategizes while thousands of audience members in attendance are allowed, and even encouraged, to cheer or heckle poets.

“This is a very competitive thing,” Vookles said. “A lot of the teams that end up on the final stage are deadly serious about this.”

A native of Memphis, Tenn., Vookles has teamed up with four other poets, all of whom earned their way onto the squad through competitions at the White Plains Library. The diverse group, which features a White Plains supermarket cashier and a Macintosh consultant, will compete for up to $2,000 is cash prizes.

Vookles said many of the poems read are personally inspired, autobiographical events with an emotional story to tell.

The published poet said she is no different. While Vookles experimented with poetry when she was younger, she said she didn’t begin to seriously devote herself to the craft until her husband John died in 2004 of cancer.  Vookles said writing was a form of therapy and a way to preserve her husband’s memory.

“Reading my poems to a room full of people, they all learn something about my husband and a part of him is not really gone,” she said.

One of Vookles more popular poems recounts what she said was the most horrifying experience of her life – taking her husband to the emergency room where he later passed away. 

“So many people loved that piece and that moment has been transformed in a way because of that poem,” she said. “It’s a poem that many people have heard and say they have been touched by.”

Although Voorkles said she doesn’t plan to present the piece at this year’s slam, the third national competition she has been to, the curator said this year will be special for another reason. Her brother is expected to make the trip to Charlotte from Atlanta, the first time he will have heard her poetry performed in person.

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