Griffin Peralta is a self-described “crier”. He is Reno’s local poetry slam champion, and he cries on stage. Despite this, he considers himself a feel-good poet.
As an English teacher at Wooster High School, he’s found that poetry is generally heavy-hearted.
“I work really hard to write stuff that is meant to uplift people … or to like, make it easier for them to get up in the morning,” Peralta said of his own style as a poet trying to bring hope instead.
Peralta has always known that he wanted to help people in the career he chose as an adult. He joked about wanting to be a scientist when he was younger, but decided that he wanted to work directly with people. He’s been teaching at Wooster High School for the past four years and just received tenure last year.
Peralta will teach a poetry unit in his classroom with an emphasis on spoken word. He performs for his students, and gives them opportunities to do the same.
During his poetry unit he allows students to split themselves into two groups: those who want to present, and those who would prefer not to. Each group will receive different instructions, and the class is more catered to student needs.
“It’s a bell curve,” Peralta said, referring to how many students are interested in spoken word. Out of all of his students he believes about 15% are very interested in poetry.
His goal, regardless of who wants to do spoken word or not, is to make poetry more relevant to students. He shows students recent poetry from people their age.
Peralta performs at the monthly open-mic hosted by the Spoken Views Collective in The Holland Project.
His own journey into poetry started after high school.
“I really felt like I’d crack open the old poetry books and be like, [John] Keats [a poet of the early 1800s], and just like, check out immediately,” Peralta laughed about his own journey.
He didn’t feel much love for poetry initially, but found it with Hank Sosnowski, a former TMCC professor who taught poetry at the community college.
Peralta took Sosnowki’s class in 2008 as a “generic” prerequisite for his degree, but the class became so much more when he found that the professor was all about spoken word. Since then Peralta has been frequenting poetry slam competitions in Reno and Lake Tahoe, and looks for them when he travels during the summer.
Peralta earned his poetry slam champion title in 2019, at the Sierra Nevada College’s Annual Tahoe Slam.
When Peralta isn’t competing in competitions, he performs at open mic events in town. As a member of the Spoken Views Collective, he often attends their events at the Holland Project every third Wednesday of the month.
Peralta has made it his goal to write one new poem a month for the open mic. It’s helped him write more regularly, and has opened up more opportunities to explore the art further.
“Setting consistent goals for myself has made me like, look for more prompts or more methods to make the process of producing a little bit easier,” Peralta said.
According to Peralta, another great tool that inspires consistency is having a designated notebook to write in. In his classroom, he has a small tan journal, with a golden sun engraved on the cover.
“I have this one student who will show me the stuff he’s written sometimes, and next time he does something-,” Peralta paused to lift the journal as if giving it to someone, “This is your book.”