If there is one thing that makes people come together universally, it is pie.

But pie is only one of the attention grabbers for Poetry & Pie, an event hosted by Westminster Round, the English Club.

The event allows for students, alumni and faculty to come together and share poetry that they have created with an audience, while enjoying free pie. The event took place in the Mind and Hearth and drew a crowd that filled in the area and milled around  the coffee shop.

“One thing that is important about Poetry and Pie is that it allows us to bring our love of literature to the greater community. It is not just English majors, but everyone can come and share and listen to the poetry,” junior and Westminster Round president Luke Eldredge said.

“The feeling of the crowd laughing when I wanted them to when I read my first piece was exhilarating and it certainly helped boost my confidence as a writer and performer of the written word,” senior reader Kyler Lacey said.

Many of the poetry performers were students, but there were a few exceptions. Cathy Bobb, the wife of English professor Vic Bobb, also shared poetry, as did a few Whitworth alumni. English professor and Spokane poet laureate Thom Caraway also shared some of his work.

The content of the poetry varied for each person, which allowed for myriad different topics and emotions to be present at the event. One poem was a tongue-in-cheek representation of selling typewriters, while another was about parents fighting downstairs while siblings hold each other in their bedroom. The mixed bag of topics is one of the important parts of Poetry and Pie, Eldredge said.

“It was great to be a part of an event where I was able to share something I had written with the community as a whole,” Lacey said.

“There is such a diversity of experiences reflected in the people’s poems, and so when different majors come they can share their own experiences through poetry,” Eldredge said.