Poets Resilient After English Cuts
By James Kelly
Published April 22, 2026
Before Og the Caveman invented nicknames, every caveman was named Og, English Professor Paul Rogalus explained to Groovy Noodle patrons. And before Og named it “golf,” the game with the long stick and “some kind of egg … like a Pterodactyl egg” was simply called “boring game with stick.”
The Groovy Noodle-goers were well-acquainted with Og, the caveman inventor of poetry and the blues, a fixture of Rogalus’s writing. And so, with their macaroni and beer, they listened politely to Rogalus’s absurd and grammatically fractured caveman tales, as he described the moment a pterodactyl swooped towards Og’s friend Gorf, picked him up, and flew him into the side of a cliff. Og learned that golf was not so boring after all, the audience clapped, and emcee Alison Kaiser called the next person to the microphone.
It was in many ways a typical open mic night for the Poets and Writers club. Writers and musicians took turns sharing their thoughts about Craigslist and artificial intelligence and “pregaming with your dudes” and being a screenager and the ghosts of former Montreal Canadiens. Mark Flynn, an English Professor, shared a poem about organizing his album collection. With his catalog in alphabetical order, the Doobie Brothers can keep Elvis in check, and Herbie Hancock can hang with Jimi Hendrix. “Those cats were both out there,” Flynn said. “They deserve each other.”
The open mic was also smaller and shorter than in the past. It was without many of its familiar participants, many of them graduated or studying abroad or no longer employed by Plymouth State. There was no lightning poetry round. Everybody sat comfortably at Groovy Noodle’s hightop tables, rather than on the milk crates that had once provided haphazard overflow seating.
“A lot of people that had been involved in this club for a long time have graduated,” said Kaiser, who is President of Poets and Writers. “I also do think that there has been a systematic attack on the English program and the humanities as a whole, and I know that we’ve lost a couple club members from transferring schools.”
Poets and Writers has felt those absences beyond just open mics. The most recent edition of Centripetal, Poets and Writers’ literary magazine, received submissions from fewer people than in previous years, according to Poets and Writers Vice President Meghan Hall, who is also an editor for The Clock.
At the same time, regular club meetings have seen a slight increase in attendance, a fact Hall attributes to a shift in the purpose of the club. “Two years ago, the open mics were bigger but the club meetings were much smaller,” she said. Attendees today seek a third place where they can write and hang out. “Students seem more interested in consistent, cozy meetings,” Hall said.
Poets and Writers is now operating at a school with substantially fewer English and writing professors. Scott Coykendal, Nic Helms, Annette Holba, Cathie Leblanc, Mary Beth Ray, and Metasebia Woldemariam, all former English or Communications & Media Studies faculty, were among the 17 faculty who took the Separation Incentive Program last semester. Liz Ahl, who taught Poetry Workshop and Advanced Poetry Workshop, also took the SIP. Without any Poetry Workshop classes running this semester, it has been harder for Poets and Writers to get new members or submissions, Hall said.
The fall edition of Centripetal, titled Life After Death after cover art by Simone Faucher, used the faculty cuts as a thematic anchor. “For us, it was just kind of looking at what the future of our English program and our club and just English and Humanities at Plymouth as a whole was gonna look like after we felt this death of losing Liz Ahl [and] of losing so many of our beloved professors,” Kaiser said.
Artists are no strangers to hardship, though. Poets and Writers persists, despite the cuts to English and the humanities, and the Plymouth community continues to embrace writing and poetry. “There are still artists, there are still writers, even if you take away their program or call it something else,” Kaiser said. For students who see their professors leaving or their programs shrinking, it’s important to keep creating and to maintain their individuality, she said.
When Kaiser first joined Poets and Writers, she was self-conscious about her writing and scared to share it aloud. She would whisper her poems at open mics, shaking and avoiding eye contact, and then run away as soon as she was done, she said. Still, she kept coming back because she sought the sense of community Poets and Writers provided.
“That’s what’s really important about preserving these spaces: not everybody wants to do sports,” she said. “There are people who want to sit in a room and write together and go to open mics and perform and celebrate. I think if I didn’t have that space, I would be a drastically different person.”